Gregory's Server
My #CompSci lecturers often dropped the names of inventors. But only if they were men. We talked about Gordon Moore, obviously Turing 🏳️🌈 was mentioned, about Don Knuth, about Chomsky etc.
But when we discussed the #ARM architecture, we never talked about the inventor *Sophie Wilson*. We also never talked about *Mary Ann Horton*, despite her work on `vi` and `terminfo` -- but of course we mentioned Bill Joy. We discussed the Spanning Tree Protocol, but not its inventor *Radia Perlman*. We have the whole field of #SoftwareEngineering, but who coined the term? *Margaret Hamilton*. We mentioned the ENIAC and v. Neumann, but failed to talk about *Adele Goldstine*. We discussed the origins of #OOP and #Smalltalk but ignored *Adele Goldberg*. We programmed in #Assembly but never talked about the woman who wrote the first #Assembler, *Kathleen Booth*. And don't get me started on #Safari and our sweet @lisamelton <3 Or any of the (incomplete list) of *Ida Rhodes, Carol Shaw, Shafi Goldwasser, Edith Clarke, Annie Easley, Joyce Little*, ...
And today? Let's talk about our favorite trans woman CPU designer, Lynn Conway.
1/2
My #CompSci lecturers often dropped the names of inventors. But only if they were men. We talked about Gordon Moore, obviously Turing 🏳️🌈 was mentioned, about Don Knuth, about Chomsky etc.
But when we discussed the #ARM architecture, we never talked about the inventor *Sophie Wilson*. We also never talked about *Mary Ann Horton*, despite her work on `vi` and `terminfo` -- but of course we mentioned Bill Joy. We discussed the Spanning Tree Protocol, but not its inventor *Radia Perlman*. We have...
@ljrk @lisamelton so many notable names mentioned here, and in replies, and yet no Fran Allen !! The first woman to win the Turing award
@ljrk this. I make a point of it, at least in my small corner of CS. Talking about the BSDs? We’re gonna talk about Bill AND Lynne Jolitz. Modern sandboxed computer architectures? Joanna Rutskova needs a name check! Usable computing means we should talk about MEZ and Angella Sasse. We don’t change the perception that CS is a boys club unless we show all the other people in there!
@ljrk I am so upset. I thought I had filled the major gaps in my knowledge. This is showing me how much I missed.
I was a comp sci major. A bunch of classes included “history of” bits in the beginning, and interspersed throughout.
I was often the only woman (it’s complicated: :genderfluid_flag: ) in the class. This would have made life a lot better for me, and helped me feel a lot less alienated.