It should be pointed out, just for balance, that Margaret Hamilton was appointed to be the head of MIT's Apollo software team long after the software was frozen; she was still a junior programmer on the project when the command module software was frozen in the 1966-67 timeframe (she became the head of the command module software development after that), and she became the head of the overall software program sometime in 1969 after the software was complete, and key people (such as Dick Battin) moved on to other things. Obviously it is still a major accomplishment to be responsible for release engineering and integration for something this mission critical, but in the media, I often see references to Margaret Hamilton somehow having "written" or "designed" or "lead the team" which made the Apollo software, which is just false.
What are you balancing by pointing out that she was a junior programmer who relied on the real key people? Are there incorrect references to her achievements in this comment thread or in the article?
Yes, the article states that "Apollo 11 ran her software", which I consider to be a false statement; and many other articles explicitly give her credit for designing or writing the Apollo software. I think writers make that mistake in good faith, since they don't know the timeline of development. And it's not so much that she "relied on the real key people" - she was not a major figure of the development phase of the Apollo software, and certainly did not lead it; Richard Battin and Dan Lickly led the development, and the latter handed the leadership of the software effort over to her as he left the project - but this was after the development itself was over.
I am not at all trying to minimize her accomplishments, which included being responsible for the software work, such as release, integration, and debugging during most of the actual flights. However, a lot of people, basically just because of lack of knowledge, give her credit for leading the development or writing of the software as well, which is incorrect.
NASA[0][3] and MIT[1][2] both agree that Apollo 11 ran her software (where "her software" means "software she and her team wrote", not "software she wrote entirely on her own"). The TechCrunch article echoes them, and I haven't seen anything in the article or this thread suggesting she did everything single-handedly.
[0] https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/sep/HQ_03281_Hamilton_...
[1] https://news.mit.edu/2016/scene-at-mit-margaret-hamilton-apo...
Well, if you wanted to find examples of misinformation that needs to be corrected, you've certainly succeeded, since several of these press releases make the mistaken syllogism "Margaret Hamilton led the software team" & "the software team developed the software" -> "Margaret Hamilton led the development of the software". But this is false because of the timing - Hamilton did not lead the team while the team was developing the software.
And the statement from the last link:
"At the start of the Apollo program, the onboard flight software needed to land on the moon didn’t exist. Computer science wasn’t in any college curriculum. NASA turned to mathematician Margaret Hamilton, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to pioneer and direct the effort."
... is just jaw-dropping in how false it is. That simply didn't happen. NASA couldn't have possibly been aware of Margaret Hamilton at the time they decided to rely on MIT for Apollo guidance; she didn't join the project until several years later, and in a small role.
Cool. I'm going to go with NASA, MIT, Wired[0], and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory History of Apollo On-Board Guidance, Navigation, and Control[1] as my sources of information on this one.
[0] https://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/
This argument probably should be settled by primary documents like contemporary Apollo org charts and development milestone reports rather than modern press releases.
It should be needless to point out that the AGC software was complete and frozen at this point, although bug fixes and some minor features made it in.
This doesn't stop misinformation from appearing all over the place, e.g. Wikipedia says "Details of these programs [LUMINARY and COLOSSUS] were implemented by a team under the direction of Margaret Hamilton", but this is false, as we've seen - LUMINARY, the moon landing software, was frozen while Hamilton was still on the COLOSSUS project. Also, if you root around the history of COLOSSUS itself - which I did at some point - you'll see that Margaret Hamilton became its programming leader in 1968, after COLOSSUS was complete.