Not sure if sexism or plain hubris, but this particular incident from the recently deceased #MargaretHamilton is still so prone to repeat itself in many tech environments:
She also proposed a software fix to prevent the error happening during a real mission, but she was overruled on the grounds that the highly trained astronauts were never going to make that same mistake. Yet during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, that’s exactly what happened
news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007
Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90
Margaret H. Hamilton, a profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program, died at age 90.MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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David C. Norris 🇺🇦 🗽
in reply to Carlos Solís • • •cc @ShaulaEvans I wonder if the story of her 4yo daughter Lauren playing with command module simulator might have been told in an overly 'serendipitous' framing. Presumably, Hamilton set her girl at play with precisely the intent to stress-test her programs.
Reminds me of a passage from Karl Popper's 'Realism and the Aim of Science':
"Moreover, most of the examples of 'chance discoveries' are based on inductivist misinterpretations: genuine examples even of stumbling-block discoveries seem to be rare. ...
Oerstead, for instance, was *searching* desperately for some electro-magnetic interactions. And Roentgen, when questioned about his discovery of X-rays, explained, 'I was *looking* for invisible rays' — rays which he hoped to detect ... by means of a fluorescent screen. (This is why the screen was there.)" [p.41]
Easydor
in reply to Carlos Solís • • •Carlos Solís likes this.
TrueNorthSpice 🇨🇦
in reply to Carlos Solís • • •Hubris is the reason why misogyny exists
It is a part of misogyny.
There's the answer to your question.