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RIP: Betty Holberton, Original Eniac Programmer
DecoDragon writes "Betty Holberton, one of the original ENIAC programmers, died on December 8th. An obituary describing her many achivements as well as her work on the ENIAC can be found in the Washington Post. Her accomplishments included contributing to the development of Cobol and Fortran, and coming up with using mnemonic characters for commands (i.e. a for add). She was awarded the Lovelace Award for extraordinary acomplishments in computing from the Asssociation for Women in Computing, and the Computer Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computer Society for "development of the first sort-merge generator for the Univac which inspired the first ideas about compilation.""
Having said that, for OSS to foster the giant leap forward that you suggest would require a large shift in the way people look at and create OSS. The simple truth is that 99.99% of all OSS is just reinvention of closed source software to scratch an itch or for political reasons. This is not the type of environment in which such a leap springs forth.
While Open Source has many benefits, it would take an awful lot for me to agree with your premise that its more well suited than closed source for the type of efficency gain you're looking for. Such leaps are often made by one or very few people, with everyone else following later. Given that, such a leap is just as likely to occur with plain-old closed source as with OSS.
"There were no manuals," one of the women, Kay McNulty Mauchley Antonelli, later told Kathleen Melymuka for an interview in Computer World. "They gave us all the blueprints, and we could ask the engineers anything. We had to learn how the machine was built, what each tube did. We had to study how the machine worked and figure out how to do a job on it. So we went right ahead and taught ourselves how to program."
Mrs. Holberton took responsibility for the central unit that directed program sequences. Because the ENIAC was a parallel processor that could execute multiple program sections at once, programming the master unit was the toughest challenge of her 50-year career, she later told Kleiman.
Now that is a programming challenge.
Imagine that the first programs were parrallel processing problems from the start, with no manuals or instructions in programing because they had to invent it all first. And the pressure of being in wartime as well.
very impressive indeed. one of those things that get done because no one knows it is impossible yet.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Perhaps she made some obscure discovery that tomorrow will change the way we think about computers.
Actually she did. We know that software has not progressed as far as hardware. Most of it's relative progress was made by the original ENIAC TEAM. And Betty more than anybody else on that team wanting something that most of modern day programers are also hoping for... make computers fun, user fiendly and a good part of our daily life.