Margaret Hamilton is the kind of legend we don’t talk about enough. She wasn’t just a programmer, she was a problem-solver and a pioneer who helped put men on the moon while juggling motherhood and working in a field dominated by men. In the 1960s, software engineering wasn’t even considered a real thing yet, and yet, there she was, writing the code that saved Apollo 11 from disaster.
One of my favorite parts of her story is how NASA ignored her when she wanted to add safeguards to prevent astronauts from making mistakes. They told her, “That would never happen.” And then of course it did happen, and she had to fix it under pressure to bring Apollo 8’s astronauts home safely. That’s the kind of foresight and brilliance that makes her work so groundbreaking.
What’s even more inspiring is that she did all this while raising a kid. She’d bring her daughter to the lab, let her sleep on the floor while she worked late nights writing code. It’s proof that women have always been capable of incredible things in STEM. Hamilton didn’t just write software; she helped create an industry, proving that software wasn’t an afterthought, but the future.