Before software controlled the world, we couldn't even agree how to spell it.
In the 1950s & 1960s, it was spelled 2 ways:
• softwear
• software
Even companies hiring coders couldn't decide.
Going to the Moon helped settle that question.
fastcompany.com/90362325/softw…
2/ And what about writing computer code?
Was it an art? a talent, like writing?
Was it a science, like math?
The software that flew to the Moon had to be perfect, and perfectly understood.
So Apollo helped turn software into an engineering discipline.
fastcompany.com/90362325/softw…
3/ That's #14 in my series about what it took to get to the Moon in the 1960s, '50 Days to the Moon,' @FastCompany.
50 stories, written in 50 days, last summer — to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing on July 20, 1969.
#Apollo51
4/ This summer, we need a reminder of what Americans are capable of, when we work together with a clear goal in mind.
Nothing gave software engineering focus and discipline like having to use computer code to fly to the Moon.
5/ If you write code, you'll appreciate this:
Apollo flight code was the world's 1st large software project. Run by MIT, at the peak it required 700 people, coding 2 computers, for 11 missions.
And MIT's 1st cut was 40% too large. The code did not fit in the computers.
6/ Apollo changed the world of computing.
But it probably would be working the same if we spelled it softwear.
fastcompany.com/90362325/softw…
7/ The whole series of 50 stories on what it took to get to the Moon is @FastCompany.
The stories are short. There are some crazy moments.
>NASA wanted to use a rope to get to the Moon's surface.
>The space race invented the computer beep.
Browse here:
fastcompany.com/section/50-day…
8/ Spelling it 'softwear' held on for quite awhile.
Here's the New York Times using it that way, in a headline, in January 1984.
fastcompany.com/90362325/softw…
9/ And by the way, the legendary picture below?
That's MIT software coder Margaret Hamilton, next to a printout of the entire flight code for one Apollo mission.
(Hamilton ended up as a senior manager at MIT, but she didn't, as some captions put it, write all the code.)
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