Slashdot Mirror
Jean Sammet, Co-Designer of COBOL, Dies at 89 (nytimes.com)
theodp writes:
A NY Times obituary reports that early software engineer and co-designer of COBOL Jean Sammet died on May 20 in Maryland at age 89. "Sammet was a graduate student in math when she first encountered a computer in 1949 at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign," the Times reports. While Grace Hopper is often called the "mother of COBOL," Hopper "was not one of the six people, including Sammet, who designed the language -- a fact Sammet rarely failed to point out... 'I yield to no one in my admiration for Grace,' she said. 'But she was not the mother, creator or developer of COBOL.'"
By 1960 the Pentagon had announced it wouldn't buy computers unless they ran COBOL, inadvertently creating an industry standard. COBOL "really was very good at handling formatted data," Brian Kernighan, tells the Times, which reports that today "More than 200 billion lines of COBOL code are now in use and an estimated 2 billion lines are added or changed each year, according to IBM Research."
Sammet was entirely self-taught, and in an interview two months ago shared a story about how her supervisor in 1955 had asked if she wanted to become a computer programmer. "What's a programmer?" she asked. He replied, "I don't know, but I know we need one." Within five years she'd become the section head of MOBIDIC Programming at Sylvania Electric Products, and had helped design COBOL -- before moving on to IBM, where she worked for the next 27 years and created the FORTRAN-based computer algebra system FORMAC.
By 1960 the Pentagon had announced it wouldn't buy computers unless they ran COBOL, inadvertently creating an industry standard. COBOL "really was very good at handling formatted data," Brian Kernighan, tells the Times, which reports that today "More than 200 billion lines of COBOL code are now in use and an estimated 2 billion lines are added or changed each year, according to IBM Research."
Sammet was entirely self-taught, and in an interview two months ago shared a story about how her supervisor in 1955 had asked if she wanted to become a computer programmer. "What's a programmer?" she asked. He replied, "I don't know, but I know we need one." Within five years she'd become the section head of MOBIDIC Programming at Sylvania Electric Products, and had helped design COBOL -- before moving on to IBM, where she worked for the next 27 years and created the FORTRAN-based computer algebra system FORMAC.
STOP RUN.
Beware of the Leopard.
This is why "brogrammers" disgust me. Yes, I've seen a lot of women drop out of the profession. Often to become parents, sometimes to move into management or project administration, sometimes for reasons unknown. But "J. Sammet" is an author or co-author of a lot of the historical computer literature in my library. You'll find her name in Knuth, in collections by Flores, and other places besides. She may not have been as publicly visible as Adm. Hopper or even Margaret Hamilton, but she helped build the foundations for modern-day IT.
In addition to valuable contributions in the field of programming language design, she was also the first female president of the Association for Computing Machinery, back when the real nerds all belonged to ACM.
Much of the testosterone-laden crap from Silicon Valley, as well as "normal" programming from the world all over would not have been possible without someone like Sammet to lead the way.
It's sad that she never got the full recognition she deserved from the world at large - even the appearance announcement here is 2 weeks late. Although her peers respected her greatly. We've lost a giant unawares.
Before electronic computers, people used to compute things by hand. Following a well defined algorithm using a mechanical calculator. This was considered semi-skilled women's work, much like typing pools, to keep them employed until they could get married and stay at home and look after kids (when households could survive on a single income).
Unsurprisingly, some of the smarter women started designing the algorithms themselves, often solving tricky mathematical problems. So when electronic computers came along, they were the operators, which included programming. So you see a lot of women in the early days.
Also, during the war, the men were off fighting. Most of the operators at Blechly park were women. But very few, if any, drove the code breaking process.
Six people developed COBAL during a set of 1959 allnighters in a NYC hotel room. One was a woman. Did any of the men get a NYT obit?
They were all important figures in their day but only one gets the Times treatment because the NYT is on a "Women in technology" kick. Death as newshook for an editorial.
They did the same thing with Grace Hopper. Now Grace was a shrewd, funny lady. I used to drive her to Mensa meeting in the 1970s. She lived in a high-rise in Arlington, Va and I lived nearby. One time, with rain pouring through a hole in my convertible's roof, I apologized for getting her soaked and we talked about her elderly, leaky, model A Ford, which somehow made it through WWII via a couple of engine rebuilds she did on her kitchen table. She liked guys- they helped her drag the motor up the stairs.
Grace and Miss Sammet did share one thing; they never married and never had children or grandchildren. Making that whole thing work - the relationship; the long, intellectually challenging hours; the reality of raising children- is easier now but, take my word for it, the young tech girls here in Austin still talk about it, especially in private among themselves.
All I can say is "So long Jean. So long Grace.", dying alone in a nursing home. It all makes me a little sad.