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Re:Two women programmers played a pivotal role in the birth ... by seanmcdirmid on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @06:37PM (#19975846)
Weren’t many of the programmers in the 50s and 60s women? The gender divide didn’t start to get really bad until late 80s, from what I understand.
Re:Two women programmers played a pivotal role in the birth ... by OJFord on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @06:47PM (#19975908)
A 'computer' was a predominantly female job role until.. I don't know, but some time post-war when we got bored of saying 'automatic computer' to describe the increasingly dominant method of computation.
Re:Two women programmers played a pivotal role in the birth ... by oh_sigh on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @07:35PM (#19976240)
Being a computer is different from being a software engineer or coder/programmer. Even when women were computers, they generally weren't the coders/programmers - this task was usually up to mathematicians or other subject matter experts who were generally men.

Women computers were replaced by software definable processors, not by software engineers.

Re:Two women programmers played a pivotal role in the birth ... by seanmcdirmid on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @10:49PM (#19977297)
I don’t think this is accurate.

The mathematicians/engineers were more like architects, and the women programmers weren’t merely compilers or input technicians. They actually wrote code, though this was also considered a drudge task back then (a view that was corrected later). Also, proximity to the hardware allowed many to grow out of their original job descriptions.

Re:Two women programmers played a pivotal role in the birth ... by seandougall on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @07:02PM (#19976026)
Until the invention of the phrase "software engineer", is my theory.