The next Real Programmers programmed in octal, and sometime made mistakes balancing their checkbook by doing octal instead of decimal mathematics. See https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/hopper.htm .

You'll notice that Hopper and the ENIAC programmers are women. Programming at this time was seen as a woman's job.

Then it became seen as a career for men. The early women programmers were overlooked; the ENIAC programmers weren't named in the early photos, and believed to be models - 'Refrigerator Ladies'. See http://mentalfloss.com/article/53160/meet-refrigerator-ladie... .

As computers became more powerful, hex became the de facto. Much of the 'heroic literature of the olden days' comes from this era, so we view history through a decidedly - to quote the link text - "macho" lens.

While it's certainly an enjoyable story, if we repeat it without the context, we continue to obscure the work of the first Real Programmers, and we propagate the false implication that "Real Programming" is intertwined with concepts of masculinity.