Margaret Hamilton coined the term 'software engineering' to earn respect

During the Apollo program at MIT, writing code was considered secondary craftwork rather than serious science. Margaret Hamilton led the team developing Apollo's onboard flight software and began aggressively using the title 'software engineering.' Colleagues initially laughed at her for comparing code to real hardware engineering. The term stuck once her software autonomously prioritized vital landing radar tasks during the Apollo 11 moon descent, preventing a catastrophic abort.

Sources

• Margaret Hamilton (software engineer)Wikipedia ↗
• Margaret Hamilton: 'They thought our code was magical'NASA ↗