Pioneer Programmer
by Jean Jennings Bartik · first published 2013
6mentions
3recommended by
4HN commenters
2014–2024first – last mentioned
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…and von Neumann started working on stored program computers. They had to figure out what opcodes were needed and how they were going to be implemented. Jean Jennings Bartik's book (http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Programmer-Jennings-Computer-C...) is a great first-hand account of all the work (and drama) from back then. (Not trying to short-change Bartik here either -- she did a lot of the work on the ENIAC instruction…
on “The Brutal Ageism of Tech” ↗…was looking through the comments to see if someone mentioned Jean Bartik already! Just to add to this comment, she also wrote an autobiographical book, which is worth reading: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pioneer-Programmer-Jennings-Compute... It is clearly a very personal and biased account, but I think there are good reasons to believe many of the things she is saying, even when they go against the commonly accepted history…
on “The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann (2019)” ↗Thanks for the book suggestion, I recently finished "Pioneer Programmer", the autobiography of Jean Jennings Bartik and her colleages working on the ENIAC. I really enjoyed reading about that age of invention, it will be interesting to find out what was going on at Harvard…
on “It's often said that the Analytical Engine was before its time” ↗…it, the ENIAC was classified, it was Goldstine that published it with their names on it. See the "controversies" section here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_t... The book "Pioneer Programmer" by ENIAC programmer Jean Jennings Bartik goes into detail about the egos at play in taking credit for the work done by Eckert & Mauchly.
on “We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute” ↗If you're interested in ENIAC history, there is a lot more interesting material to check. Jean Bartik has e.g. also written an autobiography, see "Pioneer Programmer: Jean Jennings Bartik and the Computer that Changed the World" (2013), Truman State University Press. And there is a lot of interesting information in the Honeywell vs. Sperry Rand patent court case.…
on “ENIAC programmer Jean Bartik's Amazon book review” ↗…attributed to the author, von Neumann. this prevented any of the work being patented btw, since the memo served as prior art. The events are covered in great detail in Jean Jennings Bartik's autobiography "Pioneer Programmer", according to her von Neumann really wasn't that instrumental to this particular project, nor did he mean to take credit for things -- it was others that were big fans of his that hyped up his accomplishments.…
on “The Soul of an Old Machine: Revisiting the Timeless von Neumann Architecture” ↗