Post #3728527

2026-07-10 15:20 UTC

Thanks to SIGOPS for republishing my blog post on systems in the AI era. Possibly even more exciting, I found these photos of the women that programmed the ENIAC. While Ekhart and Mauchley got the credit for the ENIAC, it was the women — Jean Bartik, Kathleen Antonelli, Betty Holberton, Ruth Teitelbaum, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence — that actually figured out how to implement their ideas for calculating ballistic trajectories. https://www.sigops.org/2026/slow-software-the-case-for-high-latency-systems-development/

Replies (3)

@irene@discuss.systems 2026-07-10 15:21

You can read more about it here https://spectrum.ieee.org/untold-history-of-ai-invisible-woman-programmed-americas-first-electronic-computer

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@rg9119@mathstodon.xyz 2026-07-10 18:44

@irene@discuss.systems On a related note from the early days of computing, you might be interested to know that the Metropolis Algorithm (core to statistical computing), named after Nicholas Metropolis, ought arguably be attributed to Ariana Rosenbluth who actually did the work of programming it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianna_W._Rosenbluth https://youtu.be/rZk2FqX2XnY?si=is88JXm3cl2kbdD7&t=1276

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@plragde@mstdn.social 2026-07-10 20:11

@irene@discuss.systems I used the photo that heads your republished blog post (also visible in the thumbnail I get on Mastodon) in the history lecture I designed for the first-year CS course at our UW (in Canada) when I was asked to coordinate it in 1989, a year after arriving as a fresh hire. It's depressing that more than 35 years later, the situation is arguably worse than it was back then. Though at least women now have more ability to connect with each other and allies. But reactionary forces do also.

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