About the film
In 1843, Ada Lovelace, a 19th-century mathematician, wrote the first series of instructions designed for a machine to carry out, creating what was, in essence, the first computer program. A century later, in 1944, it was another woman, United States Navy Rear Admiral and computer scientist Grace Hopper, who became one of the first programmers of the groundbreaking Harvard Mark 1 computer. Hopper coined the now-ubiquitous term debugging to refer to fixing a coding error.
But despite these landmark accomplishments, both Lovelace and Hopper are often overlooked in popular knowledge of computer science’s origins. Gloria Steinem has said that, “Women have always been an equal part of the past—just not an equal part of history.” The computer science and technology industry is a powerful example of this observation.
In CODE, we see the ways in which the gender and racial gap in computer science holds the industry back, and how a few pioneering women in coding, and some major tech companies and universities, are working to address the issue. CODE examines why more girls and people of color are not seeking educational opportunities in computer science and explains how cultural mindsets, stereotypes, educational hurdles, unconscious biases and sexism play a role.
