Happy Birthday Grace Hopper
- Thread starter mirandashell
- Start date
- Joined
- May 11, 2007
- Messages
- 20,569
- Reaction score
- 4,814
- Location
- youtu.be/QRruBVFXjnY
- Website
- www.ifoundaknife.com
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2007
- Messages
- 14,945
- Reaction score
- 8,145
Admiral Hopper! I'm no computer person, and my time with the Navy postdates hers, but you bet I know who *she* is. Full of win, that lady, and she has all my admiration. ETA: Though sadly, I suppose I should use "was" rather than "is". But still. She was a role model for a lot of Navy women.
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2005
- Messages
- 16,339
- Reaction score
- 4,110
- Location
- East O' The Sun & West O' The Moon
- Website
- www.jlevitt.com
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2013
- Messages
- 1,265
- Reaction score
- 163
- Age
- 33
- Location
- Warren, PA
- Website
- zachjpayne.com
I recently learned about her, what an amazing lady.
And I just found this video of her today, she's really funny and a heck of a speaker.
http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
And I just found this video of her today, she's really funny and a heck of a speaker.
http://youtu.be/JEpsKnWZrJ8
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2011
- Messages
- 16,939
- Reaction score
- 5,320
- Location
- Near the gargoyles
- Website
- www.alessandrakelley.com
Ah, the mother of compilers.
It's remarkable that all the early computer programmers were women.
She was one amazing lady.
It's remarkable that all the early computer programmers were women.
She was one amazing lady.
Happy Birthday!
Thank you for mentioning her today - I'm a software developer and am familiar with her contributions.
Interesting item (it's mentioned in the wiki article link) - she popularized the terms bug and debugging.
Happy Birthday !
Thank you for mentioning her today - I'm a software developer and am familiar with her contributions.
Interesting item (it's mentioned in the wiki article link) - she popularized the terms bug and debugging.
Happy Birthday !
Oh Noes, COBOL (Which Grace was a big part of developing, of course)! It was (and still is) the most wordy and English-like computer programming language ever, created so that managers could allegedly read the code that programmers write. This was one of the two big computer languages that were in demand in the late 90s to for programmers to make "Y2K" fixes in old computer programs that used only two digits for the year (the other was FORTRAN).
I took a COBOL course in college just to say I knew it. I even hesitate to say I know those languages here in a public post, someone might want to hire me to work on some very old computer programs.
I've seen this interview with David Letterman before, she's quite funny. She gives David a nanosecond:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-vcErOPofQ
Below the Google Doodle is a link to this video aimed at teens about the "hour of code" starring the President, Bill Gates, and a much younger Steve Jobs and other stars as well as a bunch of teens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC5FbmsH4fw
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2011
- Messages
- 16,939
- Reaction score
- 5,320
- Location
- Near the gargoyles
- Website
- www.alessandrakelley.com
Yup. Story here:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/02/08/women.rosies.math/
Women math majors from high schools and colleges across the US were whisked to the University of Pennsylvania during the Second World War to do all the programming for the military's secret computer project.
The US military kept their existence a secret for four decades.
After the war women programmers were recruited to work on the military's ENIAC project.
Men engineers built it, but the women debugged it, learned how it worked, programmed it and demonstrated it to the military high brass.
None of the women programmers were invited to the dinner the military held to celebrate ENIAC. They later learned people were told they were nothing more than booth bunnies.
Similar story to what happened here in Bletchley.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/places/bletchley_park
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/places/bletchley_park
I took COBOL also, although I can't remember why. Didn't take FORTRAN. I got a B+ on my independent studies project, even though it didn't work. The instructor said I would have needed FORTRAN subprograms.
Amazing Grace, indeed. Happy Birthday.
MM
She changed my world. I programmed in BAL Assembler on an IBM 360/158 before we got our first COBOL compiler. That was a MAJOR epiphany. This is back in the days computers were the size of a house and had 158K of memory.
I featured Grace Hopper in my newspaper column a couple of months back, and it got a lot of local attention. I was interested in her because, many years ago, I was rushing down a corridor in the Pentagon and almost bumped into this gray-haired, ancient-looking Navy captain, a woman. (I understand I can't say "female" in this forum.) I went back to my office and told a colleague, "I just saw the oldest Navy captain in the world." Much later, I learned who it was I'd almost run over, as she moved silently along, eyes cast down, apparently in deep thought. It felt strange to know that, while she and I were the same rank, she was the same age as my mother. "Amazing Grace" was a nickname well deserved.
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2005
- Messages
- 7,632
- Reaction score
- 1,204
- Location
- London, UK
- Website
- torgoblog.blogspot.com