4 Mother of Compilers

Grace Hopper is known for her contributions to the computing world. Which started at her position in the navy as a ‘computer’ for ballistic tables for WW2 after being a professor of mathematics. She served under Howard Aiken, the architect of the Mark I, which was a slow electro-mechanical computer. This huge calculator was a secret project at Harvard, and Hopper learned the coding aspect of it, which would later position her role as indispensable.

There was another secret project where another computer was stored, called the Eniac. Which was larger and could calculate more than the Mark I. These projects where so enormous that it consumed a major part of Hopper’s time. Even more so, because she and her team under Aiken where given a problem that was later reveled to be the ‘implosion problem on the nuclear bomb’. Which, as we know, was used in Japan to decimate the population.

After the war, Hopper is relieved of her duty in the navy and not allowed to be a professor again. So, she turns to a startup company which had the purpose of transforming the computer to be a household machine. It started properly with the Univac I, and Hopper’s contribution by implementing a compiler in 1951. Then, the basis of Cobol (Computer Business Oriented Language) was introduced to allow non PHD mathematics students to be able to communicate with computers.

I believe this woman’s path traced the journey of our programming world today. Her unwavering confidence to tackle problems in a different way than what was already established opened new lines of thought which constitute our contemporary programming languages. It is important to follow in her footsteps and not get comfortable with how things are now. We must continue to think programming as a tool to for a means, not a means for an end.

*All the information in this blog was referenced from these two sources: Pages 1 and 2 of the 2013 article titled “Grace Hopper – The Mother of Cobol” from the “I Programmer” web site. The video documentary “The Queen Of Code” (16 minutes long), directed by Gillian Jacobs in 2015.