One of the stories in Margaret O’Mara’s excellent history of the technology industry in the United States focuses on the role of women as the first computer programmers in the post-World War II technology boom. Back then, she explains, there were want ads for men and for women. Computer programmers – called coders to reinforce a perceived nature of the job as clerical – was a woman’s job. This was occurring while some of her main characters – like Ann Hardy who went on to work for IBM and later started her own tech firm – were denied admission to the top engineering schools.