Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton with the extensive amount of code she and her team wrote to guide the NASA mission to the Moon, USA, 1969

Here's a higher quality version

Is the dress black and blue or white and gold?
- This was the 1960s so I imagine it was more godawful than that.
You're doing God's work.
Female Harry Potter vibes
Amy Farrah Fowler

She was around 33 when this photo was taken. I don't want to talk about what I had achieved at 33.

Yeah, it's probably too late for you...
RIP Fauja Singh 😢
- Robert Downey Jr. was nominated to Oscar in 1992, at the age of 27, he didn't win though. There was a joke about him in Simpsons in 1999, so he was already a well known name far before Iron Man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhjHVQsJOlo
  His life is more like an example of how people can get back to the top after years of heavy drug abuse.
  Martha Stewart wrote her first book at the age of 42, I would count that as the start of her career.
  This chart is a bit confusing, sometimes it lists when people started a later flourishing business, sometime when they were at the top.
- Yeah, that's not helpful. Almost all these people were working towards their big thing many, many years earlier.
- Don't expect to do anything cool if you're 46 tho
Not everyone is a motivated genius. Got to work with what you've got.
I wrote a calculator in 6502 assembly one time. So I'm okay life achievement wise.

One of my favorite Lego adaptations.

From the official Women of NASA set.

In the vein of awesome women at NASA, there’s also Judith Love Cohen who worked on the abort guidance system for Apollo and was Jack Black’s mom.

I mean she still is his mom.
- Are you sure? Do you have a source for that claim?
- Well she was.
"Jack, I really like your friend Kyle. I really hope you never turn your back on him to score points with conservatives."

wish i learned about people like her back in history class. we just learned about the men on the ship. but not the vital people that made the ship land and come back without crashing

This song really hit me with that because it's both an acknowledgement that the Apollo 11 mission deserves folk music and praise for everyone who got them there and back. Though it doesnt reference the programmers and mathematicians involved
Hamilton was one of many heroes in the program. A lot of folks from the ordinary to the abnormal to the brilliant worked together and did just about the most extraordinary things anyone ever did. Every weld, every pipe fit, every wire run, every sheet stamped, every number crunched, every chemical mixed… was a part of that project.
- the most extraordinary things anyone ever did
  If I was inclined to parrot the "America is the greatest country ever" viewpoint, I would point to the moon landings as the greatest thing we ever did. And it was done by a large collection of smart, well-educated people doing science and mathematics - not by a bunch of hillbillies whose greatest accomplishment in life was figuring out how to mount a big flag on the back of their pickup truck. Even the dudes who rode those rockets to the moon were well-educated in science and mathematics in addition to being brave as fuck. It's ironic that the "America is the greatest" crowd are also generally anti-science.
  The other greatest thing we ever did was defeating fascism in WWII. Ironically enough, this was achieved with literally a command economy, not via "free enterprise". Also ironic that the "America is the greatest" crowd now loves fascism. I guess defeating the CSA in the Civil War and ending slavery (sort of) was also a great thing - and once again the irony there is obvious. It's ironies all the way down (including captured Nazi rocket technology essentially forming the basis of the moon landings).

And we've been trying to find a more concise isEven function ever since

javascript

function isEven(number) { return number % 2 === 0; }
Dunno about making it "concise" but you can shorten the name of the function and the parameter and maybe use == instead of ===
- Ew JavaScript

If you want to see what the code looks like, it's on Github: https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11

It's funny to look at this code because a large fraction of current programmers (perhaps a majority?) think that comments are a "code smell", an indication that the code is fundamentally flawed. Granted, in that language code really couldn't be self-documenting with descriptive variable and method names, but it was still sufficiently reliable and maintainable to get men to the moon and back.
No unit tests either lol.
- This is my first time hearing that anyone thinks comments are code smells. What's the logic behind that supposed to be?
no way they got README.md back in the day
It has 71 pull requests.
What do they contain?
- You know you can click them and see the descriptions and changes? : )
  Looks like they are proofreading PRs correcting spelling/whitespace, as the code was hand retyped from scans and has mistakes.

Daniel Radcliffe has so much range

Margaret Hamilton is a total boss. Check out her wikipedia entry

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)

I have a Lego version of her on my shelf.

I wish this wasn’t a retired set.
- We all know why this was retired.... 😔

I've always loved that picture for the sheer look of pride on her face. This is someone who knows she did something great and is happy to show it off

That's one of the most appealing women I've seen all week

No kidding, geeky hotness is the best and most hot kind.
yep she's definitely ~~autistic~~ nerdy, definitely my type
- You know, someone once said something wise: It is rude to diagnose someone who did not book an appointment with you. I try to stick to that.

Give it to me verbose. terminal scrolling

Scrolling? Good sir or madam, these are books, not scrolls. It's the 1960s, not the 960s
- Thanks for making me realize after 30 years of life terminally on the computer that computer 'scrolling' is in reference to 'unraveling' the page like an actual scroll
- [terminal flipping]
- And what about ‘Terminal’, good sir or madam?

Imagine having to look for the missing semicolon in there!

They programmed it in assembly instead of a programming language back then so semicolons weren't needed.
Here is the inventor of assembly programming, Kathleen Booth.
- Woosh
  You can make syntax errors in assembler, too. Ask me how I know.
  Assembler for a wire-core memory computer? Isn't assembler for 8080-type systems?
- You must be really fun at LAN parties.