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American Computer Scientists Grace Hopper, Margaret Hamilton Receive Presidential Medals of Freedom (fedscoop.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the blast-from-the-past dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from FedScoop: President Barack Obama awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom to two storied women in tech -- one posthumously to Grace Hopper, known as the "first lady of software," and one to programmer Margaret Hamilton. Hopper worked on the Harvard Mark I computer, and invented the first compiler. "At age 37 and a full 15 pounds below military guidelines, the gutsy and colorful Grace joined the Navy and was sent to work on one of the first computers, Harvard's Mark 1," Obama said at the ceremony Tuesday. "She saw beyond the boundaries of the possible and invented the first compiler, which allowed programs to be written in regular language and then translated for computers to understand." Hopper followed her mother into mathematics, and earned a doctoral degree from Yale, Obama said. She retired from the Navy as a rear admiral. "From cell phones to Cyber Command, we can thank Grace Hopper for opening programming up to millions more people, helping to usher in the Information Age and profoundly shaping our digital world," Obama said. Hamilton led the team that created the onboard flight software for NASA's Apollo command modules and lunar modules, according to a White House release. "At this time software engineering wasn't even a field yet," Obama noted at the ceremony. "There were no textbooks to follow, so as Margaret says, 'there was no choice but to be pioneers.'" He added: "Luckily for us, Margaret never stopped pioneering. And she symbolizes that generation of unsung women who helped send humankind into space."

126 comments

  1. I don't mean to sound like a downer by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    but Computer Science is basically just applied mathematics. There were lots of textbooks to follow. Now that said, both of these women were much, much smarter than me :).

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    1. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Calydor · · Score: 5, Funny

      Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/435/

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    2. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The applying part can be hard. Remember, no handy libraries to fall back on, no frameworks, no pre-built hardware components, no idea what was possible or even plausible. After all, physics is just mathematics applied to the real world.

    3. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by sg_oneill · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yep. Margret Hamilton basically wrote the code that got us to the moon by literally punching binary codes into hunreds if not thousands of feet of tape with a hole puncher and sticky tape, calculating how long each assembly instruction would take and working from there to build failsafes all throughout the code in case the inevitable malfunction happened. And those malfunctions came, and her code self corrected and avoided plunging astronauts to their deat. Brilliant stuff.

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    4. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There were no textbooks to follow for what they needed to do. The maths behind complex dynamic systems is completely different to the type of static equations that the textbooks were full of.

    5. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There are even more math textbooks today than then. But math is so diverse, even when restricted to practical applied mathematics, that there are still plenty of topics completely not covered by any textbook. A senior undergraduate thesis project can end up on a topic that is barely explored and maybe has only a handful of mentions in papers.

    6. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3

      Yep, no one ever came up with a breakthrough in computer science. It was all solved by the 1950s and written up in text books.

      What.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    7. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by fisted · · Score: 1

      Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins.

      No, you don't.

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    8. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by geekmux · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Yep. Margret Hamilton basically wrote the code that got us to the moon by literally punching binary codes into hunreds if not thousands of feet of tape with a hole puncher and sticky tape, calculating how long each assembly instruction would take and working from there to build failsafes all throughout the code in case the inevitable malfunction happened. And those malfunctions came, and her code self corrected and avoided plunging astronauts to their deat. Brilliant stuff.

      I find it sadly ironic that in the middle of you conveying this amazing story, your 2016 spellchecker code could not self correct...

    9. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 4, Funny

      If it wasn't for Grace Hopper I wouldn't have to do any debugging

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    10. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      Margret Hamilton basically wrote the code that got us to the moon by literally punching

      Bang! Zoom! Right to the moon!

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    11. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      but Computer Science is basically just applied mathematics.

      "Just" applied mathematics?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    12. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like architecture is applied carpentry?

    13. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      She did no such thing. A few hundred people did this, and she partly wrote a small part of it and partly managed the rest.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    14. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      There was actually a textbook at the time already, written by Battin. It is true, though, that Klumpp et al. had to solve novel problems specifically regarding the landing.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    15. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Says the idiots that doesn't understand computer science.

    16. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      She did no such thing. A few hundred people did this, and she partly wrote a small part of it and partly managed the rest.

      It's odd, you know. There's a pattern here on slashdot. I mean most of the overt sexism has gone. Nonetheless, whenever there's a story like this there are always far, far more people coming out of the woodwork saying how the achievements are less than stated for a variety of plausible sounding reasons and yet those comments are few and far between when a guy is the subject.

      She lead the project. Deal with it.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    17. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Just" applied mathematics?

      Yep. What she did was just applied mathematics. When the next story about not so female tech luminary comes up (Torvalds), we can go back to fawning all over him. No claims of "just applied mathematics" there or claims the achievements were overstated.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    18. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      I don't have to "deal" with the fact that she was a project lead - that is well-known fact (since 1965, at least, but not in the 1962-1965 period). But the claim that "[she] basically wrote the code that got us to the moon by literally punching binary codes into hunreds if not thousands of feet of tape with a hole puncher and sticky tape, calculating how long each assembly instruction would take and working from there to build failsafes all throughout the code in case the inevitable malfunction happened" is laughably wrong and in all its parts (languages, storage technologies, programming methods, attribution etc.) easily disproven by reading relevant basic aterials, such as Mindell's Digital Apollo.

      Your mention of sexism is confusingly random.

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      Ezekiel 23:20
    19. Re: I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Architecture is applied colorbooking.

      Carpentry is applied architecture.

    20. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      You're being intellectually dishonest. You could have said "no, she didn't write all the code, she lead the team who wrote the lander code". That is a neutral eay of saying it. Instead you write this statement infused with negativity:

      and she partly wrote a small part of it and partly managed the rest.

      So yeah, that's your personal slant on it.

      Your mention of sexism is confusingly random.

      Except there is way more negativity and downplaying of achievements on threads about female luminaries versus male ones. So yeah few people actually come out with outrageously sexist comments, but to pretend the pattern does not exist, or to be wilfully blind to it is nearly as bad.

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      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    21. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      Your mention of sexism is confusingly random.

      No, actually it isn't.

      Just take any other story of someone receiving an award for exceptional accomplishments.

      Would you, in every case, say, "no, sorry, they don't deserve that because they worked on a team"? (as I am sure you are aware, nobody works in a vacuum. Nobody accomplishes something completely by themselves. You are always standing on the shoulders of giants.)

      I am guessing that your answer would be no.

      If it is, then you have to ask why you did it in this case?

      Sexism is one possible answer. Therefor, it is not a random conclusion.

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    22. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      It's not only the fact that she took over the software team about halfway through the project. It's that there almost wasn't a single correct claim in the sentence that I responded to. This is completely disconnected from her genitals; I would have responded like that to any blatant twisting of history (which I happen to be fond of).

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    23. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by russotto · · Score: 1

      Typical SJW, always looking at everything through the lens of *-isms. Someone posted nerd-bait, an obviously overblown statement claiming to be literally true. Someone else got nerd-sniped by the nerd bait. No sexism involved.

    24. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When the next story about not so female tech luminary comes up (Torvalds), we can go back to fawning all over him. No claims of "just applied mathematics" there or claims the achievements were overstated.

      You mean like the massive amount of complaints that he didn't make a whole operating system himself because of GNU parts? Or the various people claiming he's more of a loud mouth than actually contributing much to the project in a long time? People like to complain, and heavily lauded people or work make easy targets. Just about any research news on Slashdot gets called out by someone as "Just XYZ...", with often serious comments being out numbered by jokes and such complaints.

    25. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      I can only dispute things that I know are factually wrong, and in this case, I know that and thus disputed the claims that were wrong. And the reason is that I'm rather passionate about history, more so about history of technology, even more so about history of computation and information processing, and even even more so about Apollo guidance.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    26. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      I can only dispute things that I know are factually wrong, and in this case, I know that and thus disputed the claims that were wrong.

      Except you went over and above mere disputing. I already said that and you chose to ignore it.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    27. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a lot harder to build a computer to apply the math to, than to just do the math.

      Besides, CS is not "just applied mathematics." Without actual computers, CS would just be a set of mostly unrelated subfields of mathematics. It's physical computers that tie the fields together.

    28. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > She lead the project. Deal with it.

      Led.

    29. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by tomhath · · Score: 1
      The original post by K. S. Kyosuke:

      She did no such thing. A few hundred people did this, and she partly wrote a small part of it and partly managed the rest.

      Please explain what part of that is "over and above mere disputing" or sexist. I don't see either.

      The facts are the she was part of a very large team, and at some point in the project she managed some of the team members. That is all.

    30. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      well, that didn't take long. "Hey, I'm going to use the bloviatingly meaningless term SJW and win the argument, ha HA!".

    31. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      From NASA:

      At the start of the Apollo program, the onboard flight software needed to land on the moon didn't exist. Computer science wasn't in any college curriculum. NASA turned to mathematician Margaret Hamilton, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to pioneer and direct the effort.

      Compared to your "interpretation" of it:

      and at some point in the project she managed some of the team members. That is all.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    32. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > I don't mean to sound like a downer, but Computer Science is basically just applied mathematics.

      Yeah, and writing novels is just "applied grammar." :-P

    33. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That strip makes some pretty arrogant philosophical assumptions.

    34. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly. she was part of a team, and, unlike Obama and the SJW fanatics here, Kyosuke acknowledged this.

    35. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe because it's true? She was part of a team, and as part of that team, did some of the work, unlike what was implied by the words in the TFA. They were obviously written to propagandize a bit.

      You complain about use of the 'SJW' moniker while you demonstrate all of the markers of said behavior. You accuse others of paranoia while you engage in exactly that by implying they're misogynists for questioning. Then you make vague statements about 'negativity.' *check*

    36. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also, she was really good in The Wizard of Oz.
      "Fly, my pretties!!"

    37. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      well, that didn't take long. "Hey, I'm going to use the bloviatingly meaningless term misogynist and win the argument, ha HA!".

    38. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, just one: "purity is a thing."

    39. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      At the start of the Apollo program, the onboard flight software needed to land on the moon didn't exist. Computer science wasn't in any college curriculum. NASA turned to mathematician Margaret Hamilton, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to pioneer and direct the effort.

      You see, this is exactly the kind of fact-free BS that irritates me. Here's a little reality check:

      1) The AGC contract was indeed the first to be awarded during the Apollo program as a part of such, in mid-1961.

      2) It was awarded to the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory.

      3) The major reason why it was awarded to the MIT IL was the accomplishments of Charles Stark Draper with inertial guidance, given the fact that accurate, fully autonomous guidance for a two-week period was considered a necessity for the project (at least at that point in time - the view slightly changed later due to success with radio-based navigation).

      4) Some people at MIT IL, such as Eldon Hall, already had the expertise with similar guidance (albeit for shorter time periods) from the Polaris project. They made important hardware decisions very early on, such as the use of digital integrated circuits for the computer core.

      5) Others, like Hal Laning, had already had expertise with more complicated software systems, such as compilers (Laning, Zierler, 1954: the first real algebraic compiler known) and real-time executives (which Laning adapted for Apollo with a priority-driven system).

      6) Between 1961 and 1963, when many of these fundamental decisions were being made, Hamilton was working on the (military) SAGE project at Lincoln Labs, not at the Intrumentation Laboratory.

      7) She only joined IL (and the AGC effort) apparently post-1963, initially in "junior" positions (in her own words), until she'd risen to management sometime in 1965.

      In light of these fact, would you care to explain how exactly I'm supposed to see a quote that "At the start of the Apollo program ... NASA turned to mathematician Margaret Hamilton, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to pioneer and direct the effort" as not blatantly misinformed? She was very definitely not the person they "turned to".

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    40. Re: I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you new here? Because pretending Linus doesn't get a massive amount of complaints in every story he's mentioned in makes it sound like you've never visited Slashdot before.

    41. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      It's curious that you called the text I swiped from a NASA page "fact free bullshit", then countered with uh... text from a NASA page.

      And all the coolest bits came after 1965. She was running that development effort when all the people went to the moon.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    42. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude. Just fucking stop. It's embarrassing how you're still trying to save face while being properly schooled. Just admit you wrote hyperbole and move on.

      Even the women you are defending would object to overstating their accomplishments in the way you did - any ethical people would.

    43. Re:I don't mean to sound like a downer by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      She did no such thing. A few hundred people did this, and she partly wrote a small part of it and partly managed the rest.

      I would hope that you would be gracious enough to realize when you make a mistake, but I somehow doubt it. K.S. actually came out and said she led (part of) the project. How is he not giving her credit for that?

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  2. Great and long overdue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder what negative slant the Obama haters will come up with for this one?

    1. Re:Great and long overdue! by Calydor · · Score: 1

      1) Didn't do it fast enough.
      2) What about X? Why doesn't X get a medal?

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    2. Re:Great and long overdue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Or, given the recent voting:

      3) Why no white males?

    3. Re:Great and long overdue! by Daemonik · · Score: 4, Funny

      I wonder what negative slant the Obama haters will come up with for this one?

      *ahem*...

      THIS IS JUST MORE RAMPANT SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR CLAPTRAP PISSING ON MEN! WHERE ARE THE MEDALS FOR THE MEN WHO BUILT THE MACHINE"S THESE WOMEN USED HUH??? WHAT ABOUT THEM, OBUMMER!?!?!

      These "programmers" were just punching holes in paper. My kids can do that!!! What did they do that was so great huh??? Adding 1's and 0's? Guess what, it's 1 you elitist snobs, now where's my medal???

      Thank GOD we prayed on it and JESUS TRUMP is going to make AMERICA GREAT AGAIN by putting women back where they belong. Everything was better when women wore sexy skirts and brought you drinks at work then stood around waiting for you to grab them by the p***y. Now they're just GODLESS hairy legged ABORTION machines, carrying dead fetuses up in their vaginas and trying to be equal to MEN. They're all HARLOTS and GOD will strike them down like they deserve. NASTY WOMAN!!! THROW HER IN JAIL!!!

    4. Re:Great and long overdue! by Z80a · · Score: 0

      But on another hand, if it was actually an SJW thing, would be Anita Sarkeesan and Brianna Wu getting the awards instead of those women that actually did real things.

    5. Re:Great and long overdue! by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      2) What about X? Why doesn't X get a medal?

      Hopper's medal is difficult to question in any way (she's already a National Medal of Technology recipient), but Hamilton is more of a pop culture idol, to be honest.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re: Great and long overdue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bill Gates also got the same medal in this same ceremony.

    7. Re:Great and long overdue! by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      LOL "JESUS TRUMP"

      I was about to say "let the meme's begin"... but it has already begun....

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    8. Re:Great and long overdue! by haruchai · · Score: 1

      *slow clap*

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    9. Re: Great and long overdue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He white knighted for the nookie?

    10. Re:Great and long overdue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But you forgot that we need to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill for some reason. Jackson was just an old racist who only ever adopted two Indian children in his life.

    11. Re:Great and long overdue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The slant has come from your side.. Look at the language used by obama. If you just took that at face value, it would seem she did the whole thing herself. That's untrue.

    12. Re:Great and long overdue! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, Jesus Trump? What are you smoking dude? It must be great.

      I think everyone has an opinion of the man, Jesus isn't one of them.

  3. Lawyers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just think how many women would be successful if they had access to capital. That pig Harper never removed one communist law from the books in 8 years in power. Dirty commie. No doubt Trump will be the same.

  4. Regular Language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That choice of wording was a stroke of genius. It simplifies the concept enough for the most computer-illiterate layman to understand while still being pretty technically accurate, by playing with an ambiguity of the phrase "regular language". I doubt we'll get any techie wordplay from Trump.

    1. Re:Regular Language by Orgasmatron · · Score: 1

      Obama doesn't even know his own field, much less ours. (See the recent Snowden/pardon story, and especially the comments.) And if we are really honest about it, formal language theory isn't really our field either, even if we use tools utilizing it every day (grep, lexx, gcc...).

      If "regular language" was a call out, the credit belongs to his speechwriters for not cutting it out of the gobbledygook report that his tech advisers surely handed them with the recommendation. They (the speechwriters) wouldn't know a formal language if one bit them on the ass either.

      Comments aside, these two were good awards. Very fitting, and honestly later than these ladies deserved. It almost makes up for him sullying the awards by giving the same thing to a bunch of entertainers and other Hollywood pukes who will be forgotten five minutes after they die.

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
    2. Re:Regular Language by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Comments aside, these two were good awards. Very fitting, and honestly later than these ladies deserved. It almost makes up for him sullying the awards by giving the same thing to a bunch of entertainers and other Hollywood pukes who will be forgotten five minutes after they die.

      Gee, this reminds me of a certain prize that Obama was awarded about five minutes after he became president.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re: Regular Language by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      You know that politicians employ speech writers, right?

      You think Trump is going to skip that, as well as fire the ones he had during the campaign?

      Don't be ignorant.

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      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    4. Re: Regular Language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Trump will personally deliver all of his erudite exhortations extemporaneously.

  5. Grace Hopper's resistance by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many criticized the idea compilers at the time for "dumbing down programming", fearing loss of understanding about the guts. Thus, the idea kind of languished until organizations realized they had to rewrite all their code for different brands or later models. The idea of a machine-agnostic middle language then became financially appealing to reduce recoding.

    Thus, it wasn't really the alleged human-friendly angle that made compilers marketable, but the portability of the code.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Portability was a factor but not nearly on the level you describe - note how operating systems remained in machine code right until the end of the 1960s and nobody tried to write one in a compiled language until Kernighan and Ritchie. Consider also the language that Hopper created: Cobol. A language that remains universally hated by programmers, second only to BASIC in horribleness for a trained coder - yet it was incredibly successful. It was written to look like the kind of forms that business executives filled in regularly and to make it possible for them to write their own code.
      That never actually happened very much -but it did get executives to start seeing the value in programming and COBOL became a major industry. To this day there are giant systems at many corporations (especially banks) that are written in COBOL and programmers who can work the language (and stomach it) get paid very high salaries (not least because so few are willing to learn it - most of us would rather earn less than have to fill in forms designed for burocrats to write an algorithm).

      COBOL's problems aside - it's design does show one absolutely clear intention: user-friendliness. One could argue that trying to make programming userfriendly by analogy to burocracy was a wrong way to approach it, but you can't argue that, that was the intention. Hopper was clearly trying for userfriendliness and in that regard was way ahead of her time.
      She was also involved in numerous other groundbreaking things. My critique of COBOL should in no way be read as disparaging to it's creator - on the contrary, it was a major breakthrough and while COBOL itself was a terrible language the concept of a compiler that could turn a human-readable text into code would change computing forever. Portability was just one of the many advantages that came out of it. Hopper definitely belongs in the same class as Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing as one of the principle drivers of the computing revolution.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    2. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      nobody tried to write one in a compiled language until Kernighan and Ritchie

      That's simply not true. MULTICS was written in PL/1, the B5000 (1961) had an OS written in ALGOL60. Writing operating systems in high-level languages was common by the time UNIX came along, it was only rare on the very cheapest computers (where UNIX ran), and UNIX was written in assembly until the PDP-11 port.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by silentcoder · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yet Multics wasn't portable and when both Honeywell stopped making the hardware it basically died.

      >Writing operating systems in high-level languages was common by the time UNIX came along
      But writing them portably was not - Unix's single greatest contribution was proving that you can write a portable operating system, every aspect of it's design contributes to that - not just writing it in a high level language but breaking it down into a group of loosely coupled tiny programs that communicated using a simple (the simplest possible in fact) interface, treating everything as the simplest object (a file) - the whole thing was fundamentally designed for portability. Pre PDP-11 port versions were experiments with the idea, it wasn't unix until it was written in C.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    4. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by _merlin · · Score: 2

      COBOL really isn't such a bad language. It has some nice features, like native variants that map very well onto hierarchical data like XML. The biggest problem with COBOL is shitty COBOL programmers. The language makes it easy for idiots to make code that doesn't crash, so bad programmers can get poorly written code into production. Java has much the same problem, it isn't that Java's a bad language per se, just that it makes life too easy for bad programmers, so you get stuff that uses too much memory, allocates all the time, doesn't perform, and can't be maintained.

    5. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      COBOL really isn't such a bad language. It has some nice features, like native variants that map very well onto hierarchical data like XML.

      Better than S-exps?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by courcoul · · Score: 1

      Of course, if you didn't like COBOL, there was always Fortran to fall back on. An engineer's wet dream, total nightmare and mystery for the rest. Or there was Assembly Language for the narcissistic masochists: "this inscrutably undecypherable code is mine, mine, mine, even if it kills me with a terminal ulcer".

    7. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      Well it didn't take that long afterwards before we had lisp. Upsides: functional programming can be really beautiful (look at good Ruby code sometime - it's poetry man) ... downside - LISP was terrible at it,
      so
      many
      parentheses

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    8. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by plopez · · Score: 1

      COBOL, Fortran, and LISP were very much version 1.0 . no one had ever done anything like it. Mistakes were made but through them it allowed much better languages to be developed Like VB, based on BASIC which borrowed syntax from both Fortran and COBOL. Or Python which adopted Fortran's white space significance three years after Fortran 90 discarded it.

      But seriously, they broke ground in a new area with COBOL and Fortran. An attempt to fix Fortran and COBOL resulted in Pascal which then led to UCSD Pascal which compiled to byte code and ran on a VM which then resulted in Java and C#.

      They were the first and had nothing to go on. What have *you* (pl.) invented?

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    9. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by plopez · · Score: 1

      speaking of ruby poetry
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    10. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      note how operating systems remained in machine code right until the end of the 1960s and nobody tried to write one in a compiled language until

      An OS and a domain application are very different animals. Efficiency and memory usage are usually a much bigger relative factor for an OS compared to a domain app. Systems software, like OS's, file systems, drivers, and databases, typically needs to be more "tight" per machine resources. Thus, their code was hand-crafted for a longer period in history.

      Cobol. A language that remains universally hated by programmers, second only to BASIC...

      COBOL wouldn't have survived this long if it were as bad as you say. For one, it has a lot of built-in features that directly address its domain of business, accounting, inventory, and finance; and some slick ways to process fields (columns) as named groups and sub-groups. Modern languages are still awkward at this, or at least don't do it in a standardized way.

      If you had to code all those business/financial idioms from scratch, it would indeed suck to use COBOL, but you don't have to because much is already built in. And the fact that it's built in means it's more consistent between shops and programmers. They don't have to relearn the wheel as staff moves in and out. The "cowboy coder" types will hate that, but businesses prefer plug-and-play IT staff.

      Hopper was clearly trying for userfriendliness

      I would note that Grace did not directly create COBOL. It was designed by a committee who used Grace's existing language as a key design reference. Experimental languages from others also influenced COBOL.

      Do you mean end-user, or more "English like"? She indeed was striving for a more "natural" language of programming than machine/assembler language. And it was a factor in companies deciding to use COBOL versus machine/assembler language. But, cross-machine portability was the bigger factor TO THEM. Organizations of the time didn't see naturalness of the programming language as a significant issue, but porting between machines WAS a big practical problem.

      And of course software vendors didn't want to re-code the same application for different machines. A compiler meant they only had to code it once, and then re-compile it for different machine brands. They have more customers per code base with compilers.

      And if you are going to make a cross-machine language, you might as well make it more natural than assembler, so the committee looked around for working examples, and Grace's language was one of the better of the time.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    11. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      I said COBOL was bad for programmers - I never said it was bad.
      Which part of "major breakthrough" and "way ahead of her time" didn't you understand ?

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    12. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      But writing them portably was not - Unix's single greatest contribution was proving that you can write a portable operating system

      Not really. The first 'port' of UNIX involved rewriting it in a completely different language. Subsequent ports involved massive rewrites of large portions. It wasn't until around 3BSD - long after Bell Labs had ceased to be the driving force behind it - that the pmap abstractions were introduced. The only reason that UNIX was portable was that it had such low hardware requirements: it didn't take advantage of any complex features and so you could implement something that provided the same interfaces on any hardware that met a very, very low bar. Remember, the original UNIX didn't support shared libraries, didn't support virtual memory, didn't support networks, and didn't support any I/O devices that weren't simple streams of bytes (e.g. raster displays).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    13. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      An attempt to fix Fortran and COBOL resulted in Pascal

      You left out Algol and PL/I ("fixing" Fortran and COBOL, roughly respectively.)

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    14. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      I said COBOL was bad for programmers - I never said it was bad.

      Quote: "and while COBOL itself was a terrible language the concept of a compiler [was good]..."

      And the rest of the tone looks like you are trashing COBOL in general.

      "Major breakthrough" and "ahead of [its] time" are not necessarily compliments of COBOL as a language.

      The Wright brothers' first airplane was practically junk as far as the utility of an airplane is concerned, but it WAS a "breakthrough" and "ahead of its time". Your characterizing of COBOL seems to resemble this kind of perspective. If you meant differently, I apologize; for I cannot read minds. My interpretation of your words as written is a reasonable interpretation even if that interpretation is not what the author intended.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    15. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by silentcoder · · Score: 2

      My intended meaning was somewhere in between. I think COBOL was fantastic at what it was designed for - I just think it was the wrong thing to design something for. But I don't hold that against Hopper in the least, she was breaking entirely new ground - it's impossible to do that and know the best direction to take - by definition if you go into an entirely new field you're going to make missteps which other can ONLY avoid BECAUSE you made them.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    16. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > I said COBOL was bad for programmers - I never said it was bad.

      Oh, okay. I thought you meant it was bad for gardeners, firefighters, mountain climbers, and other people who don't use programming languages.

    17. Re:Grace Hopper's resistance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or there was Assembly Language for the narcissistic masochists

      You kids and your fancy assemblers

      back in my day, we coded in MACHINE language! All those ones and zeros weren't going to write themselves.
      No get off my lawn...

  6. Is it just me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or were Rear Admiral Grace Hopper and Margaret Hamilton more deserving this award than Ellen what's-her-name (sounds like Degenerate)?

    1. Re:Is it just me... by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No. Just because you value the field of their contributions more, does not mean that her contribution to her field was any less - or even that the field is any less important. And it's not your decision to make.
      If you want to choose who gets presidential medals of freedom - run for president.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    2. Re:Is it just me... by dywolf · · Score: 4, Informative

      different kinds of courage and service to the nation, both similarly valuable.

      Ellen absolutely deserves what she got, coming out publicly at a time when even TV and "liberal Hollywood" still played LGBT folks for laughs and mockery (and still do at time), risking her career in the process. But her doing so is a big factor in the swift public acceptance of LGBT folks over the past 2 decades, one of the fastest changes in cultural norms we've ever seen, as both she was seen as imminently likable by folks (instead of as "the other"), and for the inspiration she gave many other individuals who maybe wouldn't have had the courage to do so in their own lives, which also helped show people that this wasn't some phantom group of people that "regular folks" didn't know, but that in fact LGBT folks were themselves "regular folks", that most of us know one or two, and indeed there were already part of families and lives.

      So yes, Ellen absolutely deserves it.

      the full citation:

      Ellen DeGeneres is an award-winning comedian who has hosted her popular daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, since 2003 with her trademarked humor, humility, and optimism. In 2003 Ellen lent her voice to a forgetful but unforgettable little fish named Dory in Finding Nemo. She reprised her role again in 2016 with the hugely successful Finding Dory. Ellen also hosted the Academy Awards twice, in 2007 and 2014. In 1997, after coming out herself, DeGeneres made TV history when her character on Ellen revealed she was a lesbian. In her work and in her life, she has been a passionate advocate for equality and fairness.

      You can read the others here, including Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Bill and Melinda Gates, and others.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    3. Re:Is it just me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great post - thanks!

      she was seen as imminently likable by folks

      That should be "eminently".

    4. Re:Is it just me... by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      It is his right to criticize abuse of symbols meant to celebrate accomplishment.

    5. Re:Is it just me... by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      And my right not to agree with his criticism.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    6. Re:Is it just me... by misexistentialist · · Score: 1

      bullshit, we were watching lesbian performers long before butterface DeGeneres

    7. Re:Is it just me... by dywolf · · Score: 1

      we're not talking about the special theaters, or the area of the video store behind the curtain.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    8. Re:Is it just me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *Ahem* Jodie Foster? Lily Tomlin? Kristy McNichol? Meredith Baxter?

  7. Medal of Freedom? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That sounds so cheesy. What does it look like? A bronzed large fries from MacD's?

    It makes no sense. I could see if perhaps you were instrumental in the liberation of unjust political prisoners -> Medal of Freedom. Yup, makes sense. But for being a pioneer of software development -> Medal of Freedom. Wut?

    Science is bad, only communists use science, yeah, lets call it a Medal of Freedom! Yeeehaaaw! 'Murica!

    1. Re:Medal of Freedom? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's it like to read so much into things based on the fact that you're a slobbering buffoon?

  8. Re: Nobel Piece Prize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another one?

  9. Who should get a medal? by myid · · Score: 2

    Here's the list of the latest Medal of Freedom recipients.

    That web page says

    The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

    I'd like to see medals given to people who routinely save lives, like doctors, nurses, and emergency responders. If not the Medal of Freedom, then some other medal.

    Also people who bring us our food and water, like farmers and water utility workers. We can live a matter of days without water, and weeks without food. So farmers and water utility workers are super important. But when's the last time you heard of a farmer getting a medal for producing a good crop, or a water utility worker getting a medal for supplying clean water?

    Also caring teachers in the inner cities should get medals.

    And people who risk their lives to rescue others in need, like these people.

    Who else should get a medal?

    1. Re:Who should get a medal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Do you understand that part of the rationale for awarding medals is -uniqueness-? For going 'above and beyond' the typical? For a person having an outsized impact on the -whole country- or the -whole world-? Just because a job is important, if millions of people do it every day, you don't single one of them out for a medal. And a 'medal for all the farmers' is kind of a pointless gesture.

    2. Re:Who should get a medal? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      We need to ask the question: how does this advance the cause of social justice?

      If it doesn't, then why do it? Go on to the next, more deserving person.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:Who should get a medal? by strikethree · · Score: 1

      Also caring teachers in the inner cities should get medals.

      These are the true heroes of our society. They take the unwanted spawn of the dregs of society and help them become caring and educated individuals that contribute positively to society. Without these people, our entire country would look like Los Angeles in the 1980s. Constant internecine warfare.

      I know many of those teachers will never receive anything more than a word of thanks from some of the children that they helped, but be assured that *I* personally deeply respect what you are doing.

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  10. Re:Sexist Shite by Macthorpe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Are the feminazis still pushing sexist nonsense like this ? After what the electorate told them at the last election ?

    I think what the election told feminists was that you can be on tape as admitting to abusing women and still get voted in as president?

    That fact doesn't really shut feminists up so much as prove them right.

    --
    "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
  11. Re:Nobel Piece Prize by cryptizard · · Score: 1

    And do you know that he can't pardon Snowden because he hasn't been charged with anything or appeared in front of a court?

  12. Some things never change by tomhath · · Score: 1
    From her Wikipedia page:

    In 1960 she took an interim position at MIT to develop software for predicting weather on the LGP-30 and the PDP-1 computers...Hamilton wrote that at that time, computer science and software engineering were not yet disciplines; instead, programmers learned on the job with hands-on experience.

    Sounds like most "coders" today.

    1. Re:Some things never change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And the problem with this is....?

    2. Re:Some things never change by tomhath · · Score: 0

      And the problem with this is....?

      The problem is the terrible code that results from it.

    3. Re:Some things never change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I wanted to reply earlier but my computer with a 64 bit processor running at GHz clock speeds and with gigabytes of RAM, is somehow grinding to a halt because something, somewhere that I have no control over is accessing the hard drive 100%. Apparently, someone thought it was very important for Windows to index every single file on the hard at least twice a day, with no way of opting out or finding out how to opt out.
      Then I tried to open the Control Panel, but somehow all the icons on the desktop disappeared because it was vitally important to refresh the pictures on the desktop, but the drive is still thrashing from the first problem.
      That's the problem. Useless software doing useless things that help no one and no way to stop it.

  13. indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Proves that your stupid cause all the allegations were dropped......also.....

    how is that world avg math rank of 23 sitting.....

    stupid american you cant fin add

    1. Re: indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol shut up nerd

  14. She saw beyond the boundaries of the possible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmm... "She saw beyond the boundaries of the possible" - that sounds illegal, are we sure we should be rewarding this? Sure, I guess it wasn't back then. Thanks, Nixon.

  15. The First Bug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Adm. Grace Murray Hopper also found the First Computer Bug. Can still be seen stuck with a bit of yellowed Scotch tape to a computer log in a museum somewhere.

    1. Re:The First Bug by laurencetux · · Score: 1

      Funny story about this

      The Jargon File made reference to The First Bug being in the Smithsonian and somebody from there heard and basically was about to say "Oi no we don't" but it turns out the folks that did (the NSWC) had been trying to get it to the Smithsonian.

  16. Re:Sexist Shite by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    Are the feminazis still pushing sexist nonsense like this ? After what the electorate told them at the last election ?

    I think what the election told feminists was that you can be on tape as admitting to abusing women and still get voted in as president?

    We've known for years that the feminists are happy supporting a sexual predator and accused rapist, as long as he supports abortion.

    For all the outrage over someone talking dirty, as if the liberals want us to go back to the 1950's morality codes, one particular part of that conversation has been overlooked. Trump said "And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.", followed by ""Grab 'em by the pussy, you can do anything."

    If Trump had been running as the pro-choice Democratic nominee, and the tape had been revealed by his ultra-conservative Republican rival Ted Cruz, the liberal's analysis of this would be how liberated we are sexually that women have the power of choosing which men they let touch their sacred vaginas.

    The National Organization of Women would have worked with Google, Twitter, and Facebook to create a pictogram and emoticon of it to support their candidate.

    And, once again, for the record, I didn't support or vote for Trump. I just hate the blatant hypocrisy surrounding that clip.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  17. Re:Nobel Piece Prize by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    Just because President Obama said that doesn't make it reality. Alternatively, Obama could have the Justice Department file formal charges against Snowden, and then pardon him in response.

    In reality, Obama doesn't give a shit about Snowden. Snowden did his part of exposing how evil the US is, and now he's forgotten about. He is no longer the "useful" part of being an idiot.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  18. Re:Sexist Shite by Macthorpe · · Score: 1

    Wow, that's a lot of words.

    Could have shortened that to "I don't understand how this 'feminism' works in practice but in this scenario I literally invented, liberals and feminists are all awful, I'm always right, and I'm willing to gloss over the entire history of sexual assault, the existing power imbalance between genders and classes, and pretty much the rest of reality of being a woman in America to keep that fiction going in my head. SEE HOW RATIONAL I AM"

    --
    "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
  19. Re:Nobel Piece Prize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nixon was never charged either.

  20. Re:Sexist Shite by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    Wow, great response. Maybe your next one will be based on our world. That world being the one I personally remember happening while I was in the military with Clinton as my Commander in Chief.

    Here are few examples of how Clinton's scandals were thought of back then:
    http://articles.latimes.com/19...

    If disgust with the current crisis depresses women's votes in November, we will see an anti-women's rights majority in Congress roll back the gains for women of the past 30 years," said a joint statement released Thursday by 15 feminist and civil rights organizations.

    http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01...

    The initial public reaction of feminists and other women's advocates to President Clinton's latest trouble can most charitably be described as restrained. They have a problem:

    How do you defend a man whose relations with individual women, at least in some cases, are widely believed to have been irresponsible, disrespectful, exploitive and profoundly destructive?

    And yet how do you attack a President with the best record ever on issues related to women?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

    Throughout Clinton's dealing with the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Jones and more recently with allegations that he had sex with Lewinsky, a former White House intern, women generally have supported him, and leaders of liberal women's groups have remained neutral on, if not sympathetic to, his plight.

    Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) complained yesterday about what has been "the deafening silence" of women's organizations after their criticism of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and then-Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) in recent years.

    With the various issues those articles bring up, the recurring theme is what I pointed out: the feminists are happy supporting a sexual predator and accused rapist, as long as he supports abortion.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  21. Nice trolling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Hey, Donald!. didn't like SNL making you look like a shitwaffle?

    "Well, tough. Look! We gave Lorne Michaels a medal too.

    Hahahahaha"

  22. Received the Medal Alongside ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sadly, the credit deserved for this accomplishment is diminished a little when Bruce Springstein and Robert De Niro, as well as a number of other celebrities, also received Medals of Freedom. So you either have to be great, or famous.

  23. 15 pounds below military guidelines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >15 pounds below military guidelines

    What does her weight have to do with anything?

  24. Re:Sexist Shite by epyT-R · · Score: 1

    How feminism works in practice? Well that's a first. Usually people like you are quoting the dictionary definition to make the requisite argument from authority.

  25. Re:Nobel Piece Prize by epyT-R · · Score: 1

    That's not true. He can write a pardon preemptively if he chose.. The president's power in this regard is limitless, except for impeachment (which makes total sense).

    In Biddle v. Perovich 274 U.S. 480 (1927), the Supreme Court reversed the doctrine, ruling that "[a] pardon in our days is not a private act of grace from an individual happening to possess power. It is a part of the Constitutional scheme. When granted it is the determination of the ultimate authority that the public welfare will be better served by inflicting less than what the judgment fixed."[11]

    I think this fits snowden's situation quite well. Of course, today's federal government would probably disagree, as they are the criminals here.

    from
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  26. Algol [Re:Grace Hopper's resistance] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Algol was amazing for its time, for it was designed in the late 50's yet has most of the procedural features we use and take for granted today, such as nested blocks instead of (just) go to's, and made a distinction between modifiable and read-only parameters (similar to by-ref versus by-value).

    I hope that team gets a nice award also.

    It was never really a commercial success, but influenced Pascal, Ada, VB, C, and all of C's descendants (Java, JavaScript, Php, C#, etc.)

    Perhaps if the licensing were more flexible it would have rivaled COBOL. The team also allegedly didn't pay enough attention to I/O and I/O formatting issues and standards.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  27. Re:Nobel Piece Prize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Just because President Obama said that doesn't make it reality.

    You're right. I'll take your word for it over the POTUS and his "advisors." :-P

  28. Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From the list of people I saw, probably the only two that actually deserve it. So many got it just because they are Democratic hacks. People that wouldn't have stood a chance in the past.