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This article reads:

[This is a] picture of her next to the code she and her colleagues wrote for the Apollo 11 guidance computer that made the moon landing possible. [..] To clarify, there are no other kinds of printouts, like debugging printouts, or logs, or what have you, in the picture.

enter image description here

Was this pile of code really written by a single team of software engineers?

Oddthinking
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Franck Dernoncourt
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    @Einenlum: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/739561/what-programming-languages-were-used-to-go-to-the-moon – Nate Eldredge Aug 02 '15 at 20:11
  • Removed a few lines of non-notable speculation. Either the caption is accurate or it isn't. – Sklivvz Aug 02 '15 at 22:52
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    The software has been publicly released. This may be a good place to start looking for an answer: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/07/apollo-11-missions-40th-anniversary-one.html – Mark Aug 02 '15 at 23:01
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    What do you mean by "team?" Would everyone doing work for the Apollo missions be one team? Or would it break down by company? Component of responsibility? – cpast Aug 02 '15 at 23:37
  • @Sklivvz I was just trying to show that I did a bit of thinking, potentially to give some ideas to anyone willing to investigate further. Also, I am not looking for a yes/no answer, but some answer that gives some explanation showing where my reasoning failed or was missing information. Lastly, was was my reasoning non-notable? – Franck Dernoncourt Aug 03 '15 at 05:53
  • @cpast My question used to answer to your comment. Before being cut, my question was saying "It says the software for the guidance computer was written by a team at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now the Draper Laboratory), and academic labs often aren't that large." – Franck Dernoncourt Aug 03 '15 at 05:57
  • @FranckDernoncourt you were also asking many non-notable side questions. One thing is adding extra information, another is making your own estimation and making the question depend on in, no? – Sklivvz Aug 03 '15 at 09:12
  • To commenters, please avoid posting pseudo answers as comments, they will be deleted without further notice. – Sklivvz Aug 03 '15 at 09:12
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    @FranckDernoncourt I disagree that knowing the font size is essential. In fact, for example, whether it's a lot of source code printed small or a little printed large makes no difference to the answer... – Sklivvz Aug 04 '15 at 07:34
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    @Sklivvz Knowing the font size may influence whether or not you think the claim is plausible, but I can see no way in which an actual check of the facts could be dependent on the font size. – DJClayworth Aug 04 '15 at 14:11
  • Are you wondering if the pile is actually one piece of software? It seems like this claim is not being made - there are many books there, and it's quite likely that each is one full listing of a version of the (growing) software. Is that toned-down claim the one you're interested in? – Spork Aug 04 '15 at 16:46
  • @Spork redundant code would make the claim deceptive. – Franck Dernoncourt Aug 04 '15 at 16:55
  • @FranckDernoncourt I disagree. The claim would merely be be different from yours. But I take it you want to know a) if a team wrote that code, and b) if that pile constitutes the total source code a single printout. OK. – Spork Aug 04 '15 at 17:00
  • Some group of people contributed to the code. Those who contribute to a piece of code are generally referred to as the "development team." So using standard English definitions, I would say that, yes, a single team wrote the code--by definition. – Flimzy Aug 04 '15 at 18:47
  • @Flimzy Not my fault is my question got cut. My original question mentioned what I meant by team. – Franck Dernoncourt Aug 04 '15 at 18:52
  • @FranckDernoncourt: The only *possibly* meaningful distinction I see in your original question is that of automatically generated code. But on the code projects I work on, even auto-generated code is considered code "by the team." So I don't think that's really a meaningful distinction either. – Flimzy Aug 04 '15 at 18:55
  • @Flimzy My original questions says: "It says the software for the guidance computer was written by a team at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now the Draper Laboratory), and academic labs often aren't that large". – Franck Dernoncourt Aug 04 '15 at 18:55
  • I am tired. Question posted on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Was-this-pile-of-code-written-by-a-single-team-of-software-engineers No more comment here. – Franck Dernoncourt Aug 04 '15 at 18:56
  • @FranckDernoncourt: Your original question said, as does the current form, "Was this pile of code really written by a single team of software engineers?" – Flimzy Aug 04 '15 at 21:17
  • Do you have any idea in what format that code is printed out? You may be basing your skepticism on ideas of laser-printed sheets of modern A4 paper. That would have been dot-matrix paper in a fugly green stripe, with big blocky fonts and wide margins because it was sprocket-fed and perforated. Single-sided too of course. In other words, it may not be as much *data* as you think, despite being a lot of paper. – AmbroseChapel Aug 07 '15 at 03:31
  • @AmbroseChapel http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/3331/7654 (but see link to Quora for more ideas). – Franck Dernoncourt Aug 07 '15 at 03:31
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because there is no claim that it was written by a single team of engineers. – Sklivvz Aug 07 '15 at 18:27
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    @Sklivvz As indicated in my original question, the article says "The software for the guidance computer was written by a team at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now the Draper Laboratory), headed up by Margaret Hamilton. " How much clearer could it be? – Franck Dernoncourt Aug 07 '15 at 18:35
  • Please do not put your research in the question. Instead, you can fix the question so it actually addresses a clear, undisputed and notable claim and then provide an answer, which can be collaboratively edited if you make it community wiki. Keep in mind that the edit I've just removed is original research, though, and won't be usable here. – Sklivvz Aug 09 '15 at 07:41
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    See related question: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/31602/is-this-a-photo-of-margaret-hamilton-standing-next-to-apollo-project-code-that-s – Oddthinking Jan 29 '16 at 14:13
  • @Oddthinking Thanks, good to see this one didn't get closed... – Franck Dernoncourt Jan 29 '16 at 14:40

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