The history of women in computing has largely been lost, like the histories of factory workers who built the first cars. Yet, women invented programming, were the original developers for the ENIAC, created assembly language and developed the first compiler (not to mention the term “compiler” and “bug”), and were instrumental to the development of many seminal programming languages. So what happened? It’s a drama that’s equal parts cultural excavation and celebration. In this talk, Brenda Romero digs up this fascinating history, explores what happened, and looks at how the artefacts of this legacy still affect computing and its growth today.
