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Discover time-tested strategies for leading through technological revolution, drawn from FORTRAN’s transformation of programming and illuminated through Dorothy Vaughan’s pioneering leadership at NASA.
The FORTRAN revolution of the 1950s provided a playbook for managing transformative technology adoption – one that’s remarkably relevant for today’s AI revolution. An often overlooked leader who helped pioneer FORTRAN’s adoption was Dorothy Vaughan, the NASA engineering leader who saw the language’s potential early and turned what could have been a team-destroying disruption into a catalyst for growth.
This talk decodes that playbook through three key sections: Anticipating Change, Managing Transition, and Reinforcing Success. We’ll examine how Vaughan’s team successfully shifted from human to automated computation, drawing direct parallels to today’s transition from human to AI-assisted programming.
Each section unpacks specific strategies: how to identify truly transformative technologies (as Vaughan did with FORTRAN), how to manage team fears about automation (a challenge she faced with early programmers), and how to maintain quality while adopting radical new tools (her approach to verification still resonates).
Attendees will leave with concrete tactics from this historical playbook, updated for today’s AI context. I’ll explore practical approaches to team upskilling, managing resistance to change, and maintaining team cohesion during technological disruption – all backed by both historical success patterns and contemporary AI adoption examples.
I’ll close with some predictions about the future of AI-assisted software development based on what we know about the post-FORTRAN world.
