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Margaret Hamilton started her first job in 1959 and is still working: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_en...

Depending how and whether you count academia, Donald Knuth may have a slightly longer career: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth

Feels like a decent chance you're third, then. Certainly you're one of the longest-working programmers. Best of luck. :)



Margaret Hamilton is an inspiration, but is she actually still working at age 83? I can't find anything that would indicate she is. For something like the "longest-working programmer" I'd expect them to have been actually "work"-working during that time.

And I think I'd classify Knuth as the slightly different "longest working computer scientist". He's known for his quote "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

Or perhaps I'd classify him as the somewhat more sycophantic "longest working genius" or "longest working cool guy". Heck, Knuth was uniquely awarded a master's degree for his bachelor's because his work was considered so outstanding, he's an organist and composer, and he's hilarious. I love this quote about him: "If you had an optimization function that was in some way a combination of warmth and depth, Don would be it."


She's the CEO of Hamilton Technologies: http://www.htius.com/


OP asked longest-serving programmer. That doesn't involve people who switched to management or some other position like CEO.


You don't know that. I have served as CEO and still coded every day.


As did I. Common at smaller companies with tech CEOs.


But that wasn't your primary role or you would identify as programmer not a CEO.

Having said that no matter what role it's good to code everyday.


It was my primary role. I coded for many hours every day as CEO. It did make for a lot of long days. I can identify as both CEO and programmer. And musician and other things. No need for gatekeeping.


The CEO is the chief executive responsible for execution. Is programming not a form of execution? Why would the two be mutually exclusive?


It would be fun to have her coming to tell if she's still brainstorming or coding.


Once a coder, always a coder.


“The Universal Systems Language (USL) is based on a preventive, development-before-the-fact philosophy that does not allow errors in, in the first place.”

Funny that there’s an error in that sentence.


Which is? The 2 "in"'s seem correct to me.


Oh really? Seems wrong to me.


The Wikipedia page I linked to lists a 2018 IEEE paper; her company's website still has her name on it.


Don't forget Ivan Sutherland and Niklaus Wirth. Fred Brooks joined IBM in 1956 and he's still active in research as well; Cynthia Solomon, there's quite a few


Trygve Reenskaug is still working on programming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trygve_Reenskaug




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