[mjn]

Some of the depictions in the 1960s, interestingly, played up programming as a stereotypically "women's" occupation, complete with pop-psychology explanations of why women were particularly suited for it: http://blog.fogcreek.com/girls-go-geek-again/

[snogglethorpe]

The mother of a friend of my sister's was a programmer in the '60s (for some large company, IBM or the like), and to hear her tell it, the stereotypical programmer back then was more like traditional stereotypes of newspaper reporters than anything else: hard-drinking, chain-smoking, wise-cracking, cynical, etc.

It was pretty funny imagining her—a petite artsy (actually she was a full-time artist at that point) grandmother type when I talked to her—knocking back shots of whisky with the boys but apparently that's what they all did...