Talk:Margaret Hamilton (software engineer)

Dubious - "Coined the term"
Despite all the discussion, and mentions giving Anthony Oettinger or Barry Boehm credit, the section still starts with claiming she coined the term Software Engineering. I'm going to put 'Dubious' back on there rather than 'disputed' to reflect that the claim itself is dubious. The alternative seemed to be inserting a prefae 'The term Software Engineering, variously attributed to either Oettinger or Boehm, has also been according to some sources originated instead by her'. Since I think it's just not prominent enough in her life and works to have even the current coverage, I'm inclined to use the shorter form instead. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 23:27, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm going to repeat the essence of what I said above, but I'll try rewording it, since I don't think I spelled it out clearly enough.


 * Yes, it's clearly dubious, as in subject to doubt. There are well-sourced claims by others to coining the term. based on that alone I think that any source that simply states she coined the term, with no discussion of possible contrary claims, cannot be considered a reliable source for that claim. based on that alone, I think it should be removed. We can't keep an unaddressed "dubious" tag in there forever.


 * And again, whether Hamilton's notability does not stem from a claim that she coined a particular term. She's an outstanding pioneer in the fields of computer programming, management and manned spaceflight. There's no loss to omitting a dubious claim that she may have also contributed some terminology. It's quite the opposite; retaining a dubious claim weakens the article and distracts from her very important clear contributions. TJRC (talk) 23:43, 26 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I agree with the "dubious". Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:13, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

An IP user undid the tag and restored a lot of her self-speaking on this topic; I see no remarks here but will revert with note to TALK. I have done searching and ... this just isn't well supported. I see her make the claim on utube "Margaret Hamilton, Computer Scientist & Systems Engineer | MAKERS Profile" and another or same IP user suggest it is syncronicity and independent invention -- but simply put the public use of the term is distinctly traced to the NATO conference, and the wide spread is traced to works of Boehm. She lacks any visible public notice during the period of the 1960s and lacks any prominent works developing the meaning. She's got a reputable career and historical innovations in fault handling, interrupt processes, as recently noted by the White House -- but this topic simply is not visible with her until the 21st century. Markbassett (talk) 01:13, 1 December 2017 (UTC)


 * On the other hand "made up the term" isn't much of an improvement over "came up with the term" in dubiosity. TJRC (talk) 01:25, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I appologize for the extremely long edit, but I did it to try to clear all of this up. The following Hamilton quote from Pearson is what is being referred to as “Dubious”.

Hamilton details how she came up with the term "software engineering" in the early days of Apollo:

... During the early days of Apollo, software was treated like a stepchild; it was not taken as seriously as other engineering disciplines.

... Having this kind of responsibility resulted in our creating a “field”, since there was no school at the time to learn “software engineering". This necessitated our creating methods, standards, rules and tools for developing the flight software.

...“What is the difference", I asked,"between what they are doing and what we are doing?” Knowing this, and the lack of understanding by many of what it took to create real world software based systems and the part our software played within these systems, I wanted to give our software “legitimacy” so that it (and those building it) would be given its due respect; and, as a result I began to call what we were doing “software engineering” to distinguish it from other kinds of engineering; yet, treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process.

When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. It was a memorable day when one of the most respected hardware gurus explained to everyone in a meeting that he agreed with me that the process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline, just like with hardware. Not because of his acceptance of the new "term" per se, but because we had earned his and the acceptance of the others in the room as being in an engineering field in its own right.

Relationship to the term “software engineering”

There have been many references to Hamilton's coining, making up, coming up with the term “software engineering”. These include references from NASA, The Computer History Museum, various Googled links, the Pearson Fluency-7 interview from which the above quotes were taken; and by direct video by Hamilton herself in the MAKERS reference. And, the most recent reference: ICSE 40th International Conference on Software Engineering, Gothenburg, Sweden. In 2018 ICSE will celebrate its 40th anniversary, and 50 years of Software engineering – 50 years of tremendously successful promotion of research, education and practices in software engineering. 50 years since the NATO conference.

Hamilton is a Plenary Keynote for “50 years of SE”: https://www.icse2018.org/info/keynotes In her CV, Hamilton states:

“To give their software “legitimacy”, so it (and those building it) would be given due respect; she made up the term “software engineering” to establish it as a form of engineering in its own right.”

My take on Hamilton's relationship with the term “software engineering” was simply to provide her statements documented in the Pearson book as her looking back upon what prompted her to “come up” with the term “software engineering” during Apollo. These quotes taken together tell the story of when (early Apollo), where (in her world, in the trenches developing Apollo flight software), and why (to give their methods and techniques legitimacy, just like “hardware engineering”).

These quotes by her in no way “contest” or “conflict” what others have done regarding their relationship to the term “software engineering”. She states: “When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world.” Here, she is restricting her relationship to the term to be in her world. Note, that back then Hamilton and her team were hunkered down getting man to the moon, not writing articles nor going to conferences. The quote from Pearson makes clear that there is no “instead by her” as is being brought up by Markbassed: “has also been according to some sources originated instead by her'.” There is no reason to believe Hamilton is assigning herself as being the first to come up with the term or in any way excluding others who may have also come up with the term. There are no “contrary claims” that I am aware of: that is, that someone else in the Apollo trenches came up with the term “software engineering”; in fact they were laughing at her for doing so.

Coming up with the term “software engineering” is one of the most prominent/recent “notable” things Hamilton has become known for: its all over the Web (including reputable sites) and numerous children's books have been written about this. Again the quote I have provided qualifies the context (discussed in the previous paragraph) in which her notability for this term should be considered: in her own words.

By attaching “dubious” to statements she has made regarding her relationship with the term “software engineering” is stating that she is being in some way disingenuous. And, the “her self-speaking on this topic” seems some what derogatory in tone. I don't think this is editor Markbassett's intent; but this is how it comes off. The above quote from Pearson is my attempt at clearing up the dubious issues brought up by Markbasset regarding earlier statements that did not include a clear context for Hamilton's coming up with the term “software engineering”. Hamilton should be afforded one of the many points of view as long as it is neutral, which I believe the above quote is.

I'm not at all sure where this should go but "the software community" as I knew it and worked with it through the 1970s and 1980s credited the term "software engineering" to Prof. Friedrich L. Bauer at the 1968 NATO Conference he had convened for the purpose of making software development less of an art and more of an engineering discipline. The Wikipedia article about Bauer concurs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_L._Bauer#Definition_of_software_engineering

It would be interesting to know what Barry Boehm thinks about the origin of the term, as he was heavily involved in defense software during that time period. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:646:9301:9CAD:ECB5:200:95B1:F3CC (talk) 04:47, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Hamilton's Involvement in Software Engineering

Hamilton states from her perspective what she did while responsible (as Director of the Software Engineering Division at MIT’s Charles Stark Draper Laboratory) for managing a team of ~400 software developers so that they were able work together using techniques that today we in the industry would label as “software engineering” techniques. From the quote above we are discussing:

“there was no school at the time to learn “software engineering". This necessitated our creating methods, standards, rules and tools for developing the flight software.”

She was given NASA's Space Act Award for treating software development as an engineering discipline. See: https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11Hamilton.html

Software engineering principles embodied into USL

Just because one has “Googled” doesn't mean that Hamilton has not been constantly active in the pursuit of “software engineering” goals. She has embodied “software engineering” lesson's learned from Apollo (see IEEE Computer article listed below) which were principles put in place manually during the Apollo missions and then evolved into a language, the Universal Systems Language (USL). Her company, Hamilton Technologies, developed both systems and software techniques and a life-cycle software engineering development tool in support of this language. These experiences have been documented in numerous conferences and government reports on how her USL language and its systems and software life cycle tool support has developed over the past 35 years. Her formalization of the concept of control embodied as modular control structures encapsulates aspects of “software engineering” principles directly into her USL language (a constructive approach for building systems and software).

Software Engineering Articles by Hamilton

1976: Hamilton, Margaret and Zeldin, Saydean, “Higher Order Software — A Methodology for Defining Software.”, IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering Vol. SE–2, Nr.1 (March 1976), 9–32. This is Hamilton's paper that formally codifies the foundation of systems and software engineering principles in terms of a set of axioms for a “logic of control”. These axioms are an attempt by Hamilton to provide the foundation upon which a language could be constructed to embed aspects of some of the software engineering principles she and her team had to deal with on Apollo.

1979: Hamilton, M. and Zeldin, S. “The Relationship Between Design and Verification.”, Journal of Systems and Software, Vol.1, Nr.1 (1979), 29–56. This paper describes the AXES language which supports the “logic of control” foundations (1976 above). Hamilton's axioms of control from 1976 provides the basis for 3 primitive control structures which enforce the concepts of modularity, information hiding, abstract layering of systems and asynchronous behavior inherently built into the syntax of the USL language.

1980: Harel, David, “And/Or Programs: A New Approach to Structured Programming”, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, Vol. 2, No. `, January 1989, Pages 1-17. Harel basically credits Hamilton's foundation paper as the basis from which he develops his And/Or programming language while at IBM. Note, Harel worked for Hamilton while attending MIT. Harel however, missed the “dynamics” of Hamilton's foundation (which is distributed and a fully asynchronous formulation). Harel also missed the fact that elements of a USL specification are totally ordered (not partially ordered) because each element has a unique priority. Subsequently Harel went on to develop “Statecharts”, which has a lot of the elements of his And/Or programming language, although using a different syntax.

1979: Randall W. Jensen, Charles C. Tonies, Software Engineering, 1979, pages: 94, 181, 191, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. (refers to Hamilton's work)

1986: Robert N. Charette, Software Engineering Environments: concepts and Technology, 1986, pages: 194, 195, Intertext Publications Inc., McGraw-Hill Company, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10020 (refers to Hamilton's work)

1992: National Test Bed: Software Engineering Tools Experiment – Final Report, Volume IV, Hamilton Technologies Inc. (HTI) 001 Results, 1992. This is a final DoD report on Hamilton's 001Toolsuite; a software engineering tool for the full life-cycle management of the development of systems and software. As a note, after a small amount of bootstrap code, HTI developers developed the 001Toolsuite with itself.

2002: Robert H. Bishop, The MechatronicsHandbook, Chapter 49, 2002, CRC Press, Boca Raton, London, New York, Washington, D.C. In this chapter, Hamilton describes, among other things, the “Nature of Software Engineering”.

2008 M. Hamilton and W. R. Hackler, “Universal Systems Language: Lessons Learned from Apollo”, IEEE Computer, Dec. 2008 Hamilton goes over lessons learned from Apollo and provides a high level view of her Universal Systems Language in its current evolution.

This list is just a sample (a short list) of Hamilton's involvement in her continuing efforts to evolve “systems engineering” by embodying elements of “software engineering” directly into her USL. For her further concepts of “software engineering” as applied via the automated tool set supporting the “Universal Systems Language”, see references on the “Universal Systems Language” Wikipedia page.

Google search resulted in the following links:

https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11Hamilton.html NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe stated: "The concepts she and her team created became the building blocks for modern 'software engineering.' ...”

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/margaret-hamilton-apollo-software-engineer-awarded-presidential-medal-of-freedom Which states: “Hamilton led the team that developed the building blocks of software engineering – a term that she coined herself.”

https://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/

http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/margaret-hamilton/ Which states: “During this time at MIT, she wanted to give their software “legitimacy”, just like with other engineering disciplines, so that it (and those building it) would be given its due respect; and, as a result she made up the term “software engineering” to distinguish it from other kinds of engineering.”

https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Snyder-Fluency-With-Information-Technology-7th-Edition/PGM336784.html From an interview published in this book Hamilton states: "When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a long time.” … etc.

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/30/8689481/margaret-hamilton-apollo-software

https://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/scientists.html Rayl states: “With her colleagues, she developed the building blocks for modern “software engineering,” a term Hamilton coined. What later became the foundations for her Universal Systems Language (001AXES) and Development Before the Fact (DBTF) formal systems theory, allowed the team to create what she called ultra-reliable software for the moon trip.

I believe this statement by Rayl is essentially correct by does not provide any of the context in which Hamilton came up the term, in Hamilton's words. Without the context given by Hamilton in “Fluency-With-Information-Technology-7th-Edition”, it comes off as an unfounded statement. The version of the text we are discussing that has been labeled as “Dubious” was intended to remove this unfounded statement and replace it with one that came directly from an interview with Hamilton which is found in “Fluency-With-Information-Technology-7th-Edition”.

http://www.draper.com/news/margaret-hamilton-apollo-software-engineer-named-fellow-computer-history-museum Restatement of information gathered from the Computer History Museum Fellow Award Bio.

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/251093main_The_NASA_Heritage_Of_Creativity.pdf

http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/margaret-hamilton-the-woman-who-put-the-man-on-the-moon/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Margaret-Hamilton-American-computer-scientist Abbreviated copy of Hamilton's Wiki. IP:155.52.187.23


 * I notice the dubious tag had gone from the claim was gone from the line about she made up the term Software Engineering. (And some further edits on the section -- though sadly not adding anything substantial about the bulk of her career, error checking advances to technology and her business career.)   I've made the mention about others explicit and put the dubious tag back.  It is WP:EXCEPTIONAL when phrased as if she alone put the term in general use as a field and academic area.  As stated above, it existed back in the 50s, and generally is known and well-documented became popularized via Ottinger and Boehm starting in 1964.  While it is possible that the "When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world." is about her either bringing the term to NASA in 1966 or even her inventing it locally, there is no presented evidence of her actually popularizing the term, and it simply is not plausible that in 1966 a 30-year old woman caused the historical events and there were no remarks about it, plus it is simple fact that Boehm did much of the popularizing and she was working not writing the books and papers that did it.  Occasional cites, especially self-made or echoing her, just are too weak a basis for that large a claim.   Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:45, 22 March 2019 (UTC)


 * @Markbassett what are the sources that claim that she didn't invent the term "software engineering"? Because every source I've seen disagrees with your assessment including the IEEE: Indeed, Margaret Hamilton, renowned mathematician and computer science pioneer, is credited with having coined the term software engineering while developing the guidance and navigation system for the Apollo spacecraft as head of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. . I'll restore the edits to the article by another user until you can provide reliable sourcing of the contrary. &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 19:37, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
 * p.s. remember that Wikipedia must be based on reliable sources WP:RS. Original research cannot be used WP:OR. &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 19:42, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Markbassett has repeatedly violated WP:NOR over the years trying to keep Hamilton from getting credit for coining the term. He resorted to googling the term to find it in advertisements in the 1950s, which of course have no bearing on whether programmers were given proper acknowledgement of their importance in the engineering field as engineers. A great many sources credit Hamilton with coining the term, including the IEEE who would know. To me it looks like folks are trying to prevent a woman from having a central role. Of course she had a central role, which is why good-faith editors keep coming here to restore credit where credit is due. Binksternet (talk) 23:38, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Apollo 11 section - length?
The lengthy section on Apollo 11 is very interested; what it isn't, however, is encyclopedic. The Apollo 11 article has similar information, though not in as much detail. I think that the information on the computer incident should be greatly reduced in this article, maybe enhanced a bit in the Apollo 11 article, and that there should be a clear connection from this article to the relevant section in the Apollo 11 article, for readers interested in details. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:21, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree that the Apollo 11 content is worth keeping, but not in this article. It should be merged into the Apollo 11 article, with a brief summary here and a Wikilink to more details. Reify-tech (talk) 19:23, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * What exactly in the section is irrelevant or undue in a biography of Hamilton. Can you be more specific so I can move or remove it pre-GA review? --- Coffee  and crumbs  05:07, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I put a lot of comments about this section in my review. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 11:39, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Why no disambiguation link for just this Margaret Hamilton?
There are 5 people with Wikipedia entries named Margaret Hamilton (and one Maggie Hamilton, also listed on that page), and I honestly don't see why this one and this one only shouldn't have a backlink, when WP:NAMB allows that when a number of pages have similar titles, saying "There are cases where some editors strongly believe that such hatnotes should be included, such as the various articles about treaties called Treaty of Paris.". She may be better known than others to software developers and spacefight enthusiasts, but that won't help someone who landed on her entry looking for the US Civil War nurse (as happened to me), or any of the others. Can you explain what you think sets her apart from the others? The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 03:45, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
 * NAMB says "It is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous." What that means in practice is that if you want to add a hatnote when it's not needed, you should first achieve a consensus on the talk page to do so. Also, if you add the hatnote and get reverted, you should then discuss it on the talk page rather than just re-adding it with no discussion. Can you tell me how you landed here while looking for the nurse? GA-RT-22 (talk) 04:39, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
 * At least one of the people named Margaret (or Maggie) Hamilton with Wikipedia entries (all listed on the disambiguation page) already had a hatnote, so it's not at all clear to me that (or why) it's not needed for all of them including this one. That inconsistency is what moved me to add the same to all such entries. I still don't have an answer to the question that to me is crucial, so I'll ask again: what difference do you see between this Margaret Hamilton and the others I changed in the same way and none of which were reverted, that justifies the exception you seem to be insisting on? (Tangentially, I don't read "in case anyone insists on the hatnote" (in the change message on the first part of the revert) as requesting any kind of discussion.)


 * Oh, and how I landed on this page looking for another entry? I saw a reference to that nurse elsewhere, wanted to find out more, fed "Margaret Hamilton" to DDG, clicked on the link to this page thinking it would have a link to the list page, and finding none, had to edit the URL in my browser's address bar to get to a page useful to me, with a link to the entry I was looking for. Then I got curious and checked the other entries, noticed the inconsistent use of hatnotes, and decided make them consistent in the way I found most useful: adding the missing ones instead of removing it where present.
 * The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 00:15, 29 December 2021 (UTC)


 * more (and final as far as I'm concerned) discussion of this. The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 22:33, 15 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Update: Hatnote now reads "It is usually preferable not to have a hatnote when the name of the article is not ambiguous, but hatnotes should be used when they benefit the reader, regardless of whether the title is technically ambiguous or not." (emphasis on the added language mine). I believe benefit to the reader has been clearly established for this entry. Please restore the disambiguation hatnote. The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 14:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I suggest we wait until a consensus has been reached at Wikipedia talk:Hatnote. GA-RT-22 (talk) 16:31, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

former son-in-law?
how is it possible both she and her daughter married guys names "james cox..."???? is "son-in-law" here a typo for "step-son" or something (who could logically be named after JC hamilton)?

even if it's referring a different ("step-") daughter brought into the marriage by him, how does the name get through her to HER husband then?!

i see no way of making this work, even with divorces and step-children. someone pls clarify!! 2601:19C:527F:A660:EC07:3A64:F214:1233 (talk) 02:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * As far as I can see, and using only information from this article and James Cox Chambers, it's a simple coincidence. Kind of like how I once shared a house with a guy from my work who also had the same birthday as me - made for interesting censes forms but just random chance.  Stepho  talk 05:01, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Lead re “invented” software engineering
User:Gtoffoletto - a ping to expedite talk on this. I reverted the lead line to a prior version with perhaps unclear note “revert lead to match body; the claim she invented term is not WP:LEAD worthy and been disputed before”. The “disputed before” is in prior TALK thread above ‘Dubious’, basically other and earlier have a strong claim to the widespread use of the term and development of the concept. The “not WP:LEAD worthy” is largely that phrasing does not match the body:

“Hamilton, Anthony Oettinger, and Barry Boehm have all been credited with naming the discipline of "software engineering". According to Hamilton:”

Hope this helps. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 19:42, 28 April 2023 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, the OED's first citation of "software engineering" is from August 1966, and is credited to A. G. Oettinger:
 * We must recognize ourselves—not necessarily all of us, and not necessarily any one of us all the time—as members of an engineering profession, be it hardware engineering or software engineering, a profession without artificial and irrelevant boundaries like that between "scientific" and "business" applications.
 * (italics as in original). TJRC (talk) 22:14, 28 April 2023 (UTC)


 * The OED would only know about published instances. Hamilton gained the respect of her NASA peers explicitly as an expert in software engineering without publishing the term. She also codified the practices of software engineering for NASA. Since she started at NASA in 1965, a great many people have credited her with building the idea that programmers should get proper respect in the engineering field. Oettinger and Hamilton may have independently come up with the idea at around the same time, but Hamilton's contribution has greater staying power in the media. Binksternet (talk) 23:46, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I hear what you're saying; but the OED citation is at least an objective statement of where the term is first used. The approach you seem to suggest is for Wikipedia editors to go with their subjective gut to decide which person is most influential and award priority in that way. I don't think that's a workable approach, and if it doesn't actually cross the WP:NPOV line by using editors' opinions (another way of saying their points of view) it skates very, very close; and besides is arguably circular.
 * And even subjectively, I have a hard time crediting that the President of the Association for Computing Machinery wasn't at least as highly respected as Hamilton.
 * Hamilton had an extraordinary career and made fantastic contributions to the field; I don't think it's necessary to also assign her credit for coining a term when that is, in the long run, fairly insignificant when compared to her other accomplishments, where there is clear historical dispute about who should actually get the credit. TJRC (talk) 21:41, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * What you are saying is the definition of original research WP:OR. Wikipedia is built on reliable sources WP:RS. Reliable sources say she coined the term. So we say the same. Easy. &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 10:28, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * In what universe is citing to the Oxford English Dictionary original research? TJRC (talk) 20:13, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Do you have an exact source and a quote? Do they say someone else coined the term? &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 23:36, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * 1966 Communications ACM 9 546/2   We must recognize ourselves..as members of an engineering profession, be it hardware engineering or software engineering. The citation "1966  Communications ACM 9 546/2 is OED's style for . TJRC (talk) 23:54, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * That is not a quote by the OED stating that someone other than Hamilton coined the term. Right? &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 09:45, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is. It's a citation by the OED that the first known use is by Oettinger. TJRC (talk) 21:29, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
 * "First use" is not the same as coining the term. Can you provide a direct source and quote from the OED so that we can evaluate its inclusion in the article? &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 13:45, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Gtoffoletto ??? ‘First use" is not the same as coining the term’ ??? If that doesn’t mean coining the term then what are you thinking it means ???  What phrasing would be clearer, a different and non-colloquial phrasing that is not confusable with ‘first use’ ?
 * Frankly, this whole “coined the term” thing is a rather bizarre phrasing and WP:EXCEPTIONAL statement, noted in TALK above and earlier marked ‘dubious’ in the archive 1 of talk. The term existed since at least the 50s, though widespread use seems from the international conference title given by Oettinger as President of ACM in 1967, and much of defining what the field is comes from books by Boehm in the 70s and 80s.  She had what seems a very creditable career and business with noted contributions to error-handling, but the self-advanced claim that she coined the term as a supervisor at NASA in 1968 meetings has not been said or shown to be anything other than a local popularization and internal use there for giving internal respect to software.  While it is an interesting anecdote that in 1968 one needed to play word games to get software some respect, it just doesn’t appear she did anything more significant or more widely spread as a meaning to her “coined the term”.  Cheers Markbassett (talk) 15:30, 3 May 2023 (UTC)


 * You're sticking with your old violation of WP:NOR where you try to undermine Hamilton by looking for previous instances of the term with no relevance to the issue at hand. You're also making more negative assertions here that are not supported by sources.
 * Hamilton coined the term independently of Oettinger at around the same time. We should name her as such. This wholesale removal is not appropriate. Something respecting her contribution should be seen in the lead section. Emphasis on respect. Binksternet (talk) 16:55, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
 * We have multiple high quality, reliable sources that are clear and all agree that Hamilton invented the term during the Apollo program. Everything else is WP:OR and has no place in here unless someone produces multiple WP:RS that explicitly contradict the other sources by saying that "MR. X coined the term".
 * So far not even one single dissenting source has emerged. Only WP:OR. &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 18:07, 3 May 2023 (UTC)


 * User:Gtoffoletto Please answer the question re your ‘First use" is not the same as coining the term’, and say what phrasing would be more clear what she did? Obviously there are multiple sources crediting others for the term predating her involvement in the Apollo program, so ‘first use’ is out.  Frankly, this still just seems a self-declared minor anecdote about internal NASA meetings, of no significance to the field at large or her life.  Cheers Markbassett (talk) 12:14, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * “Obviously there are multiple sources crediting others” that is not obvious at all. You have failed to provide a single reliable source so far. Once you do we can examine it. Thanks. &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 14:20, 4 May 2023 (UTC)


 * User:Gtoffoletto You did not answer the question:  re your ‘First use" is not the same as coining the term’, then what does it mean to you ?  I'm thinking there may be an alternative phrasing that is clear if 'first use' is not meant, so can you please give some explanation or phrasing that would be more clear about what is meant ?   Obviously from prior TALK about this, Oettinger and Boehm were also credited here with naming the discipline of "software engineering", and I have also seen other mentions about origin of the term.  You voiced that ‘First use" is not the same as coining the term’ and perhapws slang is not the way to go -- so what exactly do you think "coining" means in case there is a better phrasing that is not ambiguous with 'first use' ?   Cheers Markbassett (talk) 00:38, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * It is irrelevant what I or anyone else here thinks. Let's see the exact sources and their exact claims and we can discuss them. &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 09:21, 8 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Actually the sources after the statement "Hamilton, Anthony Oettinger, and Barry Boehm have all been credited" do not support it. They do not state that Oettinger and Boehm named the discipline but just mention Hamilton. I'll correct the statement unless we find other sources to support it. We need to stick to WP:RS and avoid WP:original research. If sources such as the IEEE say she invented the term then we should say the same. Quoting from the IEEE source: Indeed, Margaret Hamilton, renowned mathematician and computer science pioneer, is credited with having coined the term software engineering while developing the guidance and navigation system for the Apollo spacecraft as head of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 13:14, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The line was previously crafted as a WP:SUMMARY of the issue of multiple people credited during the second time it went thru TALK. Sure, we can add cites to Oettinger mentioning his 1967 conference by that name which makes the term common, or to Boehm and his vast body of work which largely defines the field.  These are of course cites that do not mention Hamilton at all.   Cheers Markbassett (talk) 12:28, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

WP:NOR is being misused here to prematurely close down debate. WP:NOR says that "all material added to articles must be verifiable in a reliable, published source".

A primary source is also a source, and is the best source in this simple situation, for establishing the earliest use of a term. See WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD. This is not a complex and subjective point of argument that requires scholars to interpret primary sources; it's a question of who said it first. The earliest verified uses of the term are not from Hamilton , which casts doubt about having her presented as the originator in WP:LEAD, or even at all, without reference to the ambiguity. I would note the history section on the Software Engineering article presents it very differently, and addresses that the exact origin of the term is ambiguous.

Further, the sources that support Hamilton coining the term are hardly the gold standard. They're neither reputable figures analyzing primary sources, nor figures who were there at the time stating "yes she coined this". Across the internet, they're seemingly all recent, and present Hamilton as the originator without sources, evidence, or personal experience. This is also true of the sources cited in the article. The claim appears mostly in casual human interest stories, and when they do cite something it is Hamilton's own words---not without value. But I think it is stated far too boldly and definitively in WP:LEAD to rest solely on her own words about herself.

The IEEE has also not put out a statement confirming who coined anything. An article was published on their blog by an independent writer, which is rather different.

IEEE has also published comments from Larry Druffel, who knew Barry Boehm, claiming it was coined at the NATO conference, which contradicts that it was coined in the Apollo program.

I have merely added a disputed tag for now. Perhaps it should say "may have invented", "claims to have invented", "popularized", or similar.Krombopulos11 (talk) 01:15, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm not seeing the Druffel piece. Can you provide a link? Binksternet (talk) 02:58, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * "Popularized the term software engineering" seems like the assessment that's closest to the truth. "Credited with inventing" is true but misleading, due to a highly reputable source identifying and citing the term as being first used by Oettinger. "Inventing" is inaccurate for the same reason. If there are no objections in a few days, I will change the wording. TROPtastic (talk) 01:12, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Please provide the source you are referring to. At the moment we have multiple highly reputable sources identifying Hamilton as the inventor of the term so we would need a similar level of sourcing to change that. &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 17:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I was reading this article and I saw this tag, and I must say the suggestion that this is disputed is nonsense. Can anyone at least find a source that explicitly states Person Foo coined the term "software engineering"? Multiple sources report the same thing: : is credited with having coined the term software engineering : she developed the building blocks for modern “software engineering,” a term Hamilton coined. (emphasis mine)
 * Please do note that we're after verifiability, not truth, and not here to right great wrongs. No one has provided a source that supports their vision of "truth", and there was one source about a guy using the term. So that means he must have invented the term right? No. You're asserting that finding an old publication where someone uses the term is equivalent to a source suggesting that the guy who wrote it coined the term. That's exactly what original research is. Again, give me a reliable source that actually claims who coined it.
 * I'm removing the disputed tag, since this discussion is going nowhere if no sources can be found for these assertions, which can only be assumed to be unfounded until we have a proper rebuttal - with sources. 0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 14:50, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Totally agree with the above. I would close this discussion since no source has ever been produced to "overturn" this. &#123;{u&#124;  Gtoffoletto  &#125;}  talk 14:56, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Picture caption
I've changed the caption in line with the text from the book cited. I realise that the picture in question is often claimed to show a pile of Apollo computer code print-outs, but: this cannot be true since the Apollo AGC had very little memory (ROM and RAM) and that stack of paper contains MUCH more data than could fit inside it. The Haynes book explains what's really going on.

More info about the Apollo AGC here and its software here: https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/ForDummies.html

Michael F 1967 (talk) 07:06, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Caption for the image with stack of listings - yet again
, I am undoing the change to the caption of the image of Hamilton with the stack of software listings. We have been through this issue before here, but I will repeat this and try to make this clearer. I understand that modern programmers, unless they've done real-time programing in assembly without the benefit of a macro assembler, might be surprised at the size of an assembly language program that would fit into the 36,864 words of read-only core rope memory. As a rule of thumb code such as this would assemble into about one 16-bit word per instruction, that is, per line of code.

An article about the image, taken by a Draper Lab photographer in 1969, gives the original caption as "Here, Margaret is shown standing beside listings of the software developed by her and the team she was in charge of, the LM and CM on-board flight software team." The programs were hardwired into the AGCs using core rope memory. So the code had to be ready well ahead of time in order to manufacture the computers at Raytheon. Each delivery was a tape with the binary code and an assembly code listing which served to document the code.

The source code for the Apollo 11 CM and LM software has been uploaded to github. Four hundred people worked on the Apollo 11 guidance computer software and the files are large. The LM code in github has 40,202 well-commented lines of code. This takes a lot of paper to print out.

In an interview made in 2016 after the 2009 source you quote was written, the interviewer asked Hamilton Hamilton responded:

As a woman scientist and software engineer myself, I find it sad that editors cannot believe the statements of a professional woman. StarryGrandma (talk) 21:32, 18 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Having done quite a lot of assembly programming professionally, I have no trouble believing that those stacks were of the listings.
 * The Apollo 11 listings are at: https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11
 * I downloaded them and found the command module code has 65549 lines of code.
 * From https://archive.org/details/Comanche55J2k60/page/n5/mode/2up I found that each printed page has 50 lines of code and 4 lines of header (page number, date, etc).
 * Assuming 10 pages per vertical mm in a heavy stack of listings, that makes 65549/50/10=131 mm = 1.3 m
 * The lunar module will have similar, so call it 2.5 m of listings.
 * From the listing images, this is probably output from the assembler, not input. So it may also include tables of symbol addresses and similar - see last pages of listing images. For archiving (the purpose of the listings) and debugging you definitely want those symbol tables - I still use symbol tables today.
 * All entirely consistent with being listings.
 * For what its worth, I think they weren't doubting a woman's word, they were just showing their own ignorance. Personally I admire and respect her as an engineer immensely - doubly so, since she had to fight prejudice too.  Stepho  talk 00:47, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * , thank you for correcting my mistaken edit. I was unaware of previous discussion here on this topic - being too ignorant to think to look for archived discussions (or to know how to access them). What I did was change the caption here to be in line with the caption given for the same photo in an actual printed book I've got. Naturally, I'd take the word of the engineer standing beside that stack of print-outs over the printed caption. I've no idea why anyone would think I'd pay the slightest attention to the fact that the engineer in question is a woman.


 * - it's not a case of disbelieving someone when you've never heard what they've got to say.


 * : in this case, I think the word 'misinformed' is perhaps a kinder word to use?


 * Anyway, mistake noted. My copy of the book has its caption corrected (in pencil!).


 * Michael F 1967 (talk) 06:54, 19 July 2024 (UTC)


 * My apologies. Although I did mean it in the vein of misinformed since not many people nowadays do assembly programming. If nothing else, it provided me a reason to download the AGC code :)  Stepho  talk 08:29, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * thank you and no worries - I made a mistake and the fact that two editors took the trouble to explain my mistake in some depth is very helpful. Once upon a time, I did do a little rather primitive assembly programming, except it was in the late 70s and early 80s on home micros, mostly hand-assembled, and I've never seen a "proper" print-out of assembled code.
 * Thank you for your comments - genuinely welcome. I'm here to learn.
 * Michael F 1967 (talk) 15:19, 19 July 2024 (UTC)