{"id":129,"date":"2017-08-30T17:01:35","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T17:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/the-first-computer-programmer-was-a-woman\/"},"modified":"2022-10-13T20:50:20","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T20:50:20","slug":"the-first-computer-programmer-was-a-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/the-first-computer-programmer-was-a-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Computer Programmer Was a Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we talk to more folks interested in opening coding schools, it’s amazing to see the amount of interest in getting more girls interested in tech. \u00a0So we thought this article titled \u201cA Brief History of Women in Computing<\/a>\u201d by Faruk Ates was a fitting blog topic.<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, women were the first software engineers.\u00a0 The first language I used at my first job was Ada, named after Ada Lovelace. \u00a0In 1843, she wrote the first algorithm for the Babbage Engine, one of the first computing machines. \u00a0Lovelace, in fact, is widely regarded as the first computer programmer – ever.<\/p>\n

Many women since have been crucial to the development of computer science.\u00a0\u00a0Hedy Lamarr, originally an actress, helped co-develop a frequency hopping algorithm in World War II, which formed the basis of technologies used today from wifi to cell phone technology (CDMA) and bluetooth. \u00a0Jean Bartik and 5 other women were the first team of programmers (or “Computers” as their job was called back then) for ENIAC, one of the first multi-purpose electronic computers. \u00a0In 1952, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper created one of the world’s first compilers (a compiler is a program that translated human-readable code into computer-readable language). \u00a0And don’t forget the true story <\/a>of the movie Hidden Figures<\/em>, of the women who were crucial to the complex computing and math for our space program.<\/p>\n

\"
Pioneers in Computer Science – Lovelace, Bartik, Hopper, and Lamarr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Faruk goes on to argue that it isn\u2019t biology that caters to it being a male dominated field but that women were \u201cforced out\u201d and that different cultures are more welcoming to women. For example, in India coding is looked upon as a field for both men and women. While \u201cwomen in the U.S. made up only 18% of undergrads in Computer Science and Engineering\u201d in India \u201cthat number was 42%.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do you think? We\u2019d love to hear your opinion on this as it plays out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you know that women were at the center of the invention of computer science?  From Ada Lovelace in the 1800’s to the women at the core of computing during the World Wars and our flight to the moon, women have left their indelible stamps on the field of Computer Science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coder-blog","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12327,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/12327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thecoderschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}