Certified badass here: Grace Hopper was one of the first computer programmers, writing some of the earliest programs and computer languages in the 1940s. Her nickname was Grandma COBOL. She joined the Navy during WWII and retired as a rear admiral. (Picture taken in 1984)
Certified badass for sure. I wouldn’t mess with her!
She’s brilliant. She also looks like she never took any shit during her lifetime!! Love it!!
She has a building named after her, Hopper Hall, at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.
She also is the origin of the phrase of bugs in the computer when she sent this back to IBM (I think) “Moth in relay”
https://preview.redd.it/uz9pvrkbgksd1.jpeg?width=740&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=669571df0a8a0cf137e94e190d1606a7c32de63b
This is the look of a woman that says, “Junior, I didn’t back down from Bull Halsey, and I won’t back down from you.”
Wow, what a pioneer!
GO GO GAM GAM!
> computer languages in the 1940s
Not to deflect from what she accomplished, which is outstanding, but Programming languages are built upon assembly, which builds upon machine code. There were no top-level languages such as Cobol until the 1950s. In the 1940s, “programming” was setting registers or hand tuning assembly language on said computers until higher level languages came about.
We had a class room named after her at university, and many other rooms named from other computer pioneers, like the Sherry Turkle Lounge, and a toilet named Bill Gates.
I’m proud to own a Grace Hopper nanosecond (a ~ 12″ piece of wire) received from then Captain Hopper when she visited our College computer science department c. 1976. That was the punch card and mainframe era. She made predictions:
1. Computers of the future would be very small
2. They would run very hot and cooling would be vital
3. They would have many many small leads on them.
This was her “smoking hairy golf ball” forecast for 2000’s era CPUs, which was absolutely accurate.
In 1976, she was already the oldest active duty navy officer. I don’t know if she originated the phrase, but she said “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.”
She was a proper programmer. She helped the Navy count beans. I don’t understand how this makes her a Rear Admiral.
Explain to me what I am missing.