Mother of Compilers

Today I will talk about the biography of Grace Hopper and her role in the development of the first compilers.

The first one, the article, talks specifically about Grace Hopper as not only the responsible for the Cobol language development, but also for the constant pressure exerted to the industry for computer development and making it accessible. One of her reasons for this was to bring the research and career woman’s interests in computing to the forefront. Because in those times it was difficult for women to find interest in some fields that were “only for men” so she became the most famous and important software experts of the navy. I can say as a woman I really admire her courage for standing out in a patriarchal world.
One thing that I didn’t know is that Grace Hopper was the first person using the term bug, one of the most software development terms or concepts used nowadays.

The second one, the mini-documentary, talks about exactly the same. It’s like both the article and the documentary work together in order to demonstrate that effectively Grace Hopper is the Queen of code. A specific part I liked about the mini-documentary was the explanation of how Grace Hopper decided and built the first human-computer code compiler. She knew that not all people like mathematics that’s why she decided to work on a way for using and converting the English language into computer language, like high-level to low-level. In this way, any person would be able to program a computer using a common language.

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