Grace Hopper is one of the most iconic people in the world of software. Her career as a mathematician, software innovator, computer science advocate, programmer, and technical leader spanned the early era of computing through to the 1990s. One of the first notable computer programmers, Hopper developed the first programming text book, one of the first compilers, and perhaps most importantly she was the visionary who ideated and developed the first programming language with an English-like syntax. That programming language, FLOW-MATIC, was instrumental in the later development of COBOL, which she advised. COBOL is still used to this day. Her contributions were immense and her legacy has been honored by multiple national awards and the naming of the largest conference for women in software.
Show Notes
- Harvard IBM Mark I - Manual via Harvard
- The Queen of Code via YouTube
- Grace Hopper: The Math Genius who Taught Computers to Talk via Fierce
- Grace Hopper: Full lecture at the University of Tennessee, 1983 via YouTube
- Grace Hopper via Wikipedia
- FLOW-MATIC via Wikipedia
- Episode 11: What is a Programming Language?
- Episode 87: Compilers and Interpreters
- Episode 129: BASIC
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