In the early days computer programming was considered a clerical job one learned in trade schools. I think people looked down on it partly because many of the early programmers were female, beneath the dignity of a male profession.
It rook my alma mater MIT until 2018 to recognize software worthy of a department in itself (after a huge financial donation). Before then it was a step child of Electrical Engineering. This is kind of ironic because me and most of my classmates ended up writing software for money, though almost none of us majored in that field.
> In the early days computer programming was considered a clerical job one learned in trade schools.
That's because in those days, the term "programming" didn't mean "software development", it referred to data entry. It actually was clerical work, comparable to typing a dictation on a typewriter. Only later, when user interface devices (keyboards, displays) considerably improved and it became more efficient to unify those tasks in one person, did "programming" and "software development" start to become synonymous.
It has nothing to do with "dignity of a male profession", or oppression of women, just a misunderstanding of a shift in the meaning of words.
It rook my alma mater MIT until 2018 to recognize software worthy of a department in itself (after a huge financial donation). Before then it was a step child of Electrical Engineering. This is kind of ironic because me and most of my classmates ended up writing software for money, though almost none of us majored in that field.