Chapter 4: This time it is Grace Bewster Murray Hopper´s time to shine

Renowned for being responsible for the development of the Cobol language and making computers and computing more accessible. One of the obstacles she overcame was the overall way people differentiated woman´s and man´s jobs. She had a really amusing background, interested in engineering since the beginning, doing well in mathematics and geometry at school, and studying math, physics and engineering in Vassar College.

She also joined the US Naval Reserve during second world war, where she was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation project at Harvard. That was her beginning in everything she did surrounding computation; she learned subroutines, Babbage and she actually invented the term “Bug” (this originated thanks to a moth inside the Mark I, leading to incorrect results). She later developed BINAC, a small binary machine that was built in secret for the Snark Missile project, using octal representation.

Then Hopper made a huge step towards a higher-level language, writing the A-0 compiler, with the help of her team. Then she wrote the first symbolic differentiator, i.e. a calculus program. Proving she was getting somewhere, the opportunity to put together a compiler for a large language laid on Hopper. It was the B-0 compiler, which then became Flow-matic in 1957. Cobol language included much of Flow-matic, and while Hopper was not a member of the final standards, Cobol language newer details where influenced by her, getting her title of “Mother of Cobol”. She continued working on the military until she got promoted to Captain, thanks to standardizing the Navy´s use of language.

Interestingly enough, in 1969 the Data Processing Management Association selected her as their first “man” of the year. She also was promoted to Commodore in a ceremony at the White House and a new award was established with her name by the ACM in 1971.

The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, "Do you think we can do this?" I say, "Try it." And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances."

References:

Historian (2013) Grace Hopper – The Mother of Cobol, available on: http://www.i-programmer.info/history/people/294-the-mother-of-cobol.html

Gillian Jacobs (2015) The Queen of Code, available on: https://vimeo.com/118556349