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Google Doodle Remembers Computing Pioneer Grace Hopper
SternisheFan writes "Monday's Google Doodle honors computing genius Grace Hopper (remembered as a great pioneer in computing, as well as in women's achievements in science and engineering), on what would have been her 107th birthday, doodling her right where she spent much of her time – at the helm of one of the world's first computers."
I always liked seeing the sign for Grace Hopper Park in Arlington, VA, in front of the apartment complex where she lived for years. Sadly, they did not put "Admiral" on the sign.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
If you don't know who she is, educate yourself
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I knew somebody would bring that up. In defense of COBOL, 1. Look when it was invented. 2. Look how much staying power it has. 3. Look at the train wrecks caused by later efforts to make easier, more readable programming languages.
COBOL looks pretty good when you consider all that.
Anybody on Slashdot who doesn't know who she is ... get the fuck out, because you're on the wrong website.
You might try wrapping your head around this: obligatory XKCD.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
At the time you had... Fortran... and Assembler. COBOL was a godsend to the business community. Because of it companies actually invested in computer equipment to do things... that investment reduced the cost and increased its capabilities. Eventually allowing the creation of that smart phone in your pocket. If it wasn't for COBOL it is doubtful that companies would have made the investments.
Having programed in both COBOL and Fortran... I'll take COBOL for anything business related.
Yes, it's verbose. But, it was a product of it's time. And quite the amazing language if you know what you are doing with it.
You know why there aren't a lot of women in IT now, right? It's because after Grace Hopper unleashed COBOL, we're been leery about letting them in.
(It's a joke! Claim down.)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Really? I never see the Google "home page" anymore, I just type something into the address bar, if it's not a URL then it sends it as a search to Google and gives me the results
Yes, the Google logo on the left is a bit different than usual but not enough to tell me what it was about.
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I think we can blame all the faults of COBOL on the fact that she wanted it to be human readable by business managers. What would your programming language look like if the Pointy-Haired Boss had to be able to understand it?
Thank you for that.
You see, Ms. Hopper, being ahead of her time in MANY respects, knew that programming should be easily done in a human readable fashion.
Programming computers should be easy. Having difficult to learn languages defeats the purpose of these machines. Being able to program these things should be easy to everyone and the fact that it STILL isn't shows the ineptitude of the computer science world - or arrogance (dude, computers SHOULD be hard to program because it's for smart people or some such nonsense).
Computers are a tool, The fact that computer languages haven't evolved much since the 1960s is pretty sad.
..
Please oh please post a flame that languages have evolved so that I can spank you hardily - 50 years and we're still typing esoteric computer code?! Seriously?
If you think that is the way it is, then YOU have NO imagination.
At the time you had... Fortran... and Assembler. COBOL was a godsend to the business community. Because of it companies actually invested in computer equipment to do things... that investment reduced the cost and increased its capabilities. Eventually allowing the creation of that smart phone in your pocket. If it wasn't for COBOL it is doubtful that companies would have made the investments.
Having programed in both COBOL and Fortran... I'll take COBOL for anything business related.
Yes, it's verbose. But, it was a product of it's time. And quite the amazing language if you know what you are doing with it.
Anyone who has actually been suffered to write business applications in FORTRAN IV* would rather be disemboweled by a pack of rabid were-weasels than have to do that again and COBOL would appear to be a gift from Heaven.
I began my education with, what I considered being taught a load of dead or dying languages, while Object Oriented languages were just on the horizon and Pascal and c were gaining degrees of acceptance. c is still around, but I haven't heard from Pascal in ages - it was fiddly, like Modula2 and seemed to embrace the wordiness of COBOL over the conciseness of c. I've converted systems written in COBOL and at least they were readable - what the coder was doing. FORTRAN business apps are nearly unintelligible.
* note: use of all caps
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One of my favorite quotes is from her: "It is far easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."
Your "fair share" is NOT in my wallet.
Anybody on Slashdot who doesn't know who she is ... get the fuck out, because you're on the wrong website.
No shame in being a newbie as long as one is *trying* to be a self teacher and tries to not be a newbie forever. In this case, the shame is on the one trying to run newbies off.. You are going to die a lonely death.
I suspect Jobs *would* be where he is today, since she wasn't researching cures for pancreatic cancer.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Agreed, I'm a non techie, and todays computers are less fun and useful than in the win95 era, when I could actually do things with them. Heck, the C64 held far more interest for the average person, you could at least easily learn how to program in basic.
Well, see, the first woman to publish in mathematics was stripped naked and dragged to death behind a wagon, and it's been an uphill swim ever since...
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2516
What would your programming language look like if the Pointy-Haired Boss had to be able to understand it?
Lots of comments, very little actual code.
When I was in school, we had to have over 50% comments or the TA wouldn't even try to grade your program. The habit was a good one, and although I don't always get to the 50% I still put a lot of comments in my code.
Come to think of it, making your code understandable by the PHB is not a bad goal. If the PHB can understand what you are doing, the next poor programmer (which might be you a few months after you have forgotten the project) will have an easier job fixing something.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
My version of Chrome now shows the doodle on the "New Tab" page. I'm glad. I always hated missing them.
There is a documentary about this, which I saw on Netflix (I don't remember if it was streaming or DVD) called "Top Secret Rosies." I knew about that history from my physics and math background, but my wife was amazed to hear it. Anyway, the film is worth watching.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
You mean Jobs would be still be alive and Bezos would have hair?
A pox on you, Admiral Hopper!
I got to MEET her. I was a faculty brat at Syracuse where she was a graduation speaker, and through a lot of begging, my dad got me a seat at the speakers table, and she held forth, drinking straight scotch, smoking unfiltered Pall Malls and swearing for two hours. One of the best moments in my life. I'll never forget it, and she's been an inspiration through my career.
And I have a nanosecond.
I have fond memories of her. On the one occasion I got to see her in person, I was a member of a student ACM chapter, and she was our guest speaker. I remember that she had very strong opinions, particularly about IBM.
At the time, the System 360 was all the rage, and had blue cabinets. She brought an 8080 to the presentation in a small, blue plastic case, commenting that she'd heard computers came in blue boxes. She also commented (again about the 360) that it couldn't be much of a machine, since it spent half of its time talking to itself, a reference to the operating system overhead.
I've often wondered what she'd think of computers and operating systems today, particularly Windows and Linux.
R.I.P. Grace Hopper. You're a hard lady to forget!
Programming a computer to do simple things IS easy. You want a program to add up a list of numbers, or compute the value of pi, and I can show you how to do that in a handful of lines of code.
The trouble is, people want programs that do complicated things like manage a large company's payroll system or model a 3D fantasy world. Even things that sound pretty simple, like managing your calendar appointments, become surprisingly complicated when you try to specify the requirements in detail.
What I believe is that while there are appropriate tools to for every job, there is no tool or language that makes inherent complexity go away or that makes thorny design problems easy. Neither is there such a thing -- in software or in the physical world -- as a tool that is ultimately powerful and flexible, and requires no skill or knowledge to use.
I do agree that computers are unnecessarily hard to use, but I disagree with you as to to cause. It's not the language and the process of writing and (usually) compiling code; it's the set of large concepts and abstractions one must master in order to do that effectively, and the mixed success with which OS, language, and application developers communicate those concepts and abstractions to their respective end users.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Only allowed two digit ages and forgot to handle the overflow flag.
Have gnu, will travel.
"If it's good idea, go ahead and do it. It's much easier to apologize than it is to get permission." --Grace Hopper
* credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches
* Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) is named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC.
* at the age of seven she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked, and dismantled seven...
* bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics
* wrote her own compiler in 1952.. "Nobody believed that," she said. "I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic."
More here of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
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The realm of women is whatever they want it to be. There is substantial cultural inertia, especially in places like the Southeast US, that impedes young women from trying to "do computers and tech stuff", and so the lampshading of legitimate achievements made by folks like Hopper is no bad thing. Yes, were she male she wouldn't get quite as many accolades, but so? She was a pioneer, and there is no shame in pointing out to today's young women "want to become a computer scientist? You're in good company."
I have as much distaste for postmodern cultural wankery as you, but informing women that they are welcome in the scientific community ain't that.
I taught computational physics for a couple of years as a grad student. Of the students that I considered absolutely top-notch, about 60% were women (where the difference from 50% is statistical noise). As far as physics went, they were basically the same as the men.
You, sir, are confused as you know not of what you speak.
There is 'The Assembler', and 'Assembler'. The 'The' (definite article) in 'The Assembler' is the thing (program) that assembles Assembler (language) into object code. That is then merged with the linker to a run-time to become an executable. Modern Assembler languages, and by extension 'Their Assemblers', contain macro capabilities - very similar in nature to #include in C (and other such languages). But, back in the 50's, when COBOL was written, not much macro assembler being written.
Assembler is a language. It has a grammar and a syntax - unless you wish to program in object or straight machine code.
But don't believe me (I wouldn't) - look for yourself - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language
Sigh yourself. The 'assembler' tool does not magically read your mind and spit out code. You must actually provide input to the assembler. And this input is in, wait for it, Assembler Language! Shocking, I know!
I completely agree, except the part where you said she wouldn't get quite as many accolades. She wrote the first compiler. That's fucking seminal! Who else can claim a first that big?
The first version of this Doodle got the algorithm to compute age wrong (!). The original version of the Doodle used the COBOL expression
SUBTRACT CurrentYear FROM BirthYear GIVING Age
which actually computes the negative of the age (for most people born after Christ, anyway).
I wondered whether this might be a nod to her pioneering work in software debugging, as also referenced in the flying moth at the end of the animation, but since Google has since corrected the bug, it seems even the mighty Google still sometimes commits the simplest of programming errors. (Right on their main page and logo, too. Oooops. I suppose there's also the view that the code was wrong because it was a woman doing the coding. You misogynist Google bastards.)
Whatever the reason, happy birthday and many thanks to Amazing Grace.
(full disclosure: I submitted this as a story overnight, but since it didn't get picked up, it seemed too funny to let it completely slip into the ether.)
There's nothing wrong with not knowing something important; the sin is not lifting a finger to find the fact out -- e.g. people seemingly incapable of typing a name into wikipedia and reading the first paragraph (and then whining about it in the comments instead in hopes someone will spoon-feed it to them). Those are the people who need to get lost.
Chips Ahoy: Do you think the current popularity of micros is just a fad?
Hopper: No, the big mainframes are going to disappear. In fact, I intend to scuttle them. They have to go. They’ll be too slow. We’ll build systems of computers. It will be a whole bunch of micros, and they’ll all call each other up and talk. If you use a big mainframe, first you have to do inventory and then you do payroll and so on. You might just as well have a micro doing each of those jobs all working in parallel. That’s the way you get the speed. The big pressure is going to be on faster answers. There never was a good reason for putting inventory and payroll on the same machine. The only reason you did it was because you could only afford to own one computer. That’s no longer true. The micros are as big [in terms of processing capacity] as mainframes were only 10 or 12 years ago. Back then a big mainframe had 64K. That’s smaller than today’s micros by a long shot.
Chips Ahoy: Is there a limit of what micros can do for us?
Hopper: They’ll only be limited if our imaginations are limited. It’s all up to us. Remember, there were people who said the airplane couldn’t fly.
http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/hopper_grace.htm#limits
Nobody ever claimed COBOL was intended to make life easy for developers. COBOL was designed so the people who actually bear responsibility for the business (and who are certainly not the developers) can verify that their business processes are implemented to their liking. These people include not only bosses, but also financial people, lawyers, auditors, etc.
You may scoff at COBOL, but she pioneered the idea of using a more human-friendly notation instead of machine language and its cousin, assembler. Her experiments were the precursor to Algol, which shaped all the imperative block-oriented languages we use today, including C, Java, VB, Pascal, etc.
And it made software more vendor-independent as the languages were not tied to a specific machine architecture, unlike machine code and assembler.
Before that, many scoffed at the idea of "dumbing down" programming with English-like syntax, fearing it would waste resources and invite poorly educated riff-raff into the field. (Well, maybe it did :-)
Perhaps Grace didn't get it quite right on the first try, but she helped spark a computer language revolution that led to better tools down the road. She tested waters others feared.
Table-ized A.I.
this is in no way to diminish the other pioneers in the field - Touring, von Newman, von Lovelace, etc...
Not to forget Tsu Se, Arbol de Trigo, and l'Oison.
[hint: Turing, von Neumann, Lovelace-without-von (although an optional "of")]