This article is really fascinating to me. Honestly, being the serious space buff that I am and having a degree in Space Studies, I thought I knew almost everything about the Apollo program. I loved the video of the core memory they programmed. Of course, I knew that the software was in a very crude language, since Apollo programmers did not have the 4GL languages we have today. But, I did think they had some cruder version of Assembly, and now it looks like they were directly programming in binary. Those who know me know I used to be a software engineer, too. I can’t imagine having to do this tedious work for such a massive project. It all makes sense, though, since the software for the Apollo program would have had to be developed before transistors came into widespread use in the mid to late 1970’s. The computers used in the Apollo era were still made of vacuum tubes – hence the reason they were so enormous and had limited memory requiring, “core dumps,” on a regular basis.
I am available to speak on the current and former space program at your next function. Just call 858 848 0860 or email asksandy [at] sandyeulitt [dot] com today.
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/30/8689481/margaret-hamilton-apollo-software
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