Dina St Johnston was founder of the UK's first software house. She left school at 16, studied for a Mathematics degree part-time and joined Elliott-Automation in 1953. Dina left Elliott-Automation in 1958 to start her own company, Vaughan Programming Services. In this talk we will illustrate some of Dina's projects and set her life in the context of about 50 other British women pioneers who started work as computer programmers in the period 1949 to 1959.