I have a degree in software engineering, but can you remember a time in your life when there wasn't such a thing as software engineers?
I can't.
All my life, it's been a thing.
But I bet my great grandparents went their whole life without ever hearing about software engineering.
So let's take a quick look backwards to find when software engineering popped into existence in the 1950s, NASA was doing some pretty amazing things, flying spaceships to the moon and beyond.
These spaceships were loaded with lots of technology, antennas, radios, computers, cameras, software and hardware.
And that's just on board the spaceship.
You've seen these giant command centers.
They have where mission control is.
There are computers on everyone's desk and giant screens in front of the room.
And there are dozens of scientists and engineers in the room, yet not a single one of them was a software engineer, because the term had not been used at any point in the 1950s.
In the 1960s, NASA developed the Mariner space program.
The goal here was to send unmanned spaceships to mercury, Mars, and Venus to take photos of them.
In 1962, the first Mariner spaceship was launched, and it was headed for Venus.
It didn't have anyone on board.
It was controlled remotely.
And on board were just electronics, antennas, computers, jet fuel, and cameras.
But only a few minutes after launching, things started to go wrong.
The computer on board that was in charge of controlling the ship was acting erratic, giving all kinds of wild commands for the ship to do.
The folks at mission control tried to correct the computer gone wild, but they couldn't do anything about it.