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1. Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:05:32 UTC Robert McNees

   Computer science pioneer and United States Navy rear admiral Grace Hopper was born #OTD in 1906.

   As far as I’m aware, she is the only person who has both a supercomputer and a US Navy destroyer named after her.

   Image: Computer History Museum

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:13:27 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     As early as 1949, Hopper was encouraging members of her team at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation to share and reuse blocks of code for the UNIVAC-1.

     They soon developed what Hopper herself referred to as the “first compiler,” the A-O. It allowed programmers to reference call numbers that fetched routines from pre-assembled blocks of code, as well as translate some symbolic code into machine language.

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:21:46 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     Before A-O, computers required dedicated engineers to translate what users wanted into machine/ready instructions.

     This was an important early step in the development of understandable programming languages that made computers useful outside CS, math, and the hard sciences.

     A few years later, Hopper went a step further and proposed a programming language based on English language statements. Remington-Rand (who acquired EMCC in 1950) didn’t think it sounded feasible.

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:23:47 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     Hopper and her team developed the B-0 (Business Language v 0) compiler anyway. It later became known as FLOW-MATIC:
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOW-MATIC

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:26:11 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     So #GraceHopper is very directly responsible for some major innovations in the way we use computers.

     But if you see other posts about her today, you are likely to see a few things attributed to her that she is *not* responsible for. Let me explain.

     It is true that on September 9, 1947, Hopper or a member of her team pulled a moth from one of the relays in Harvard’s Mark II computer and taped it in their logbook. But she did not invent the terms “bug” or “debugging.”

     Image: Smithsonian

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:27:27 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     The term “bug” goes back at least as far as Edison. And it turns out, “debugging” was also already in use – the technicians who installed the Mark II a few years earlier were using it.

     Here’s a fun history of these terms in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing:
     https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/728224?tp=&arnumber=728224&isnumber=15706

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:30:01 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     It’s probably fair to refer to the incident in Hopper’s log book as the first recorded occurrence of an actual bug in a computer. Indeed, she (or someone else) jokingly wrote "First actual case of bug being found" next to it.

     But claiming she originated the terms “bug” or “debugging” is wrong. By the way, the log book itself is at the Smithsonian Institute:
     https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_334663

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:33:57 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     Another common mistake — one I’ve made myself — is the claim that Hopper “invented” COBOL.

     Hopper was one of two technical advisors on one of the CODASYL committees, and some of her team members helped define the COBOL specs, but she didn’t invent the language.

     However, FLOW-MATIC was a significant influence on COBOL. One of the CODASYL committee members said that without FLOW-MATIC “we probably never would have had a COBOL.”

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:39:51 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     Hopper was known for the accessible analogies and examples in her public talks.

     Here she explains the concept of a nanosecond (10⁻⁹ s) with a bit of wire c x 1 nanosecond long. The speed of light is c = 3 x 10¹⁰ cm/s, so the wire is about 30 cm long.

     https://youtu.be/9eyFDBPk4Yw

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:41:02 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     • Theodore Tollet

     @ttollet 👍

   • Theodore Tollet (ttollet@sigmoid.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:41:03 UTC Theodore Tollet

     in reply to

     @mcnees thank you for the informative thread, and happy birthday to Grace Hopper!

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:47:38 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     She uses the same demo in this 1986 appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. Listening to her is an absolute delight. Take a few minutes to watch the interview.

     "Our first guest tonight has credits that are far too impressive for any guest on this program."

     https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x35dsz7

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:49:35 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     As I mentioned earlier, Grace Hopper achieved the rank of rear admiral in the US Navy.

     Before she was in the navy, she was a professor. Hopper finished her math PhD at Yale in 1934, while already working as an instructor at Vassar. In 1941 she became an associate professor there.

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:50:11 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     Hopper tried to enlist in the Navy when she was 34, but was rejected for active duty because she was too old.

     The urge to fight Nazis was strong, so she left her job as a professor in 1943 to enlist in the Navy reserves. They put her to work on the Mark I at Harvard.

     (She told Letterman that it had to be the Navy, because her grandfather had made rear admiral and if she had joined another branch he would’ve risen from the grave and haunted her.)

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:52:13 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     In 1966, at age 60, she took her mandatory retirement from the Navy. But they called her back up to what would be an indefinite assignment to active duty in 1967. She retired again in 1971, and was un-retired a second time in 1972!

     In 1983 she was promoted to the rank of Commodore by special appointment. Congress allowed her to remain on active duty even though she was well past mandatory retirement.

     In 1985, the rank of Commodore was changed to Rear Admiral. Hopper finally retired in 1986.

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 15:56:56 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     The Navy had rejected her in 1941, on the grounds that she was too old to join.

     In a funny twist, when Grace Hopper finally retired she was the oldest active duty officer serving in the US Navy.

     They held her retirement service on the USS Constitution, the oldest ship in the fleet.

   • Hendrik Fleming (hfleming@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 16:45:20 UTC Hendrik Fleming

     in reply to

     @mcnees but I’ll never forgive her for being responsible for creating COBOL 😜

   • Ian Butler (ihbutler@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 17:49:57 UTC Ian Butler

     in reply to

     @mcnees Marvelous post! Thank you!

   • Peter Cohen (flargh@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 18:12:10 UTC Peter Cohen

     in reply to

     @mcnees this is my all time favorite story about her.

   • Rachel Greenham (strangenoises@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:14:29 UTC Rachel Greenham

     in reply to

     @mcnees there's a quote i heard once, but can't find now. sounds like it could have come from her but i can't see evidence that it was:

     "We had to write a compiler so the boys could join in."

   • Linda Enfield (lindaenfield@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:20:57 UTC Linda Enfield

     in reply to

     @mcnees second computer language I learned was good old Common Business Oriented Language or COBOL. Kept me in work for years 😊

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:23:25 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     • Linda Enfield

     @LindaEnfield It's a classic for a reason!

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:30:10 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     • Indy Richard 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

     @IndyRichard You're welcome! Yeah, it seems like such a silly photo. I think her left hand is holding the latch you would use to open the cabinet? The photographer probably wanted her to look like she was flipping a switch.

   • Indy Richard 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (indyrichard@mastodon.scot)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:30:11 UTC Indy Richard 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

     in reply to

     @mcnees Really interesting thread. Thankyou for posting.
     A wee aside as someone who spent most of my adult life working in IT, I always laugh when people pose for pictures next to tape drives or as in James Bond films stand next to tape drives with a clip board. What was Hopper supposed to be doing in this shot? I bet she thought it was silly too.

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:32:10 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     • Stephan Matthiesen
     • Leland ‘);DROP TABLE Students;

     @ajollynerd @StephanMatthiesen When I taught in Canada students would think it was silly when I mentioned converting from feet to meters, or miles to km. Why would they ever use a conversion outside the metric system? But none of them knew their weight in Newtons!

   • Leland ‘);DROP TABLE Students; (ajollynerd@mstdn.ca)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:32:17 UTC Leland ‘);DROP TABLE Students;

     in reply to

     • Stephan Matthiesen

     @mcnees @StephanMatthiesen I just wish you guys would join the rest of the world in the Metric system (said the guy who still measures his height/weight in ft/in/lbs).

   • Stephan Matthiesen (stephanmatthiesen@troet.cafe)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:32:18 UTC Stephan Matthiesen

     in reply to

     • Leland ‘);DROP TABLE Students;

     @ajollynerd @mcnees

     I thought that for people in the US 30cm is quite as unintuitive as saying lightnanoseconds, so when I compared it to a foot I was just trying to be helpful.

   • Leland ‘);DROP TABLE Students; (ajollynerd@mstdn.ca)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:32:20 UTC Leland ‘);DROP TABLE Students;

     in reply to

     • Stephan Matthiesen

     @mcnees @StephanMatthiesen In fact, at 299.8mm, it is far more accurate to call it 30cm than to say it’s precisely a foot.

   • Leland ‘);DROP TABLE Students; (ajollynerd@mstdn.ca)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:32:21 UTC Leland ‘);DROP TABLE Students;

     in reply to

     • Stephan Matthiesen

     @mcnees @StephanMatthiesen #UmmActually it’s 5mm shy of a foot. #SorryNotSorry

   • Stephan Matthiesen (stephanmatthiesen@troet.cafe)'s status on Friday, 09-Dec-2022 19:32:22 UTC Stephan Matthiesen

     in reply to

     @mcnees
     You can confuse people at a party by expressing lengths in lightnanoseconds (almost precisely one foot).

   • Blithedale (blithedale@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-Dec-2022 13:39:19 UTC Blithedale

     in reply to

     @mcnees we usually only get to see that photo of her in her 80s in uniform. Nice to have a reminder she was once a woman in tech

   • Douglas VB (douglasvb@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-Dec-2022 15:12:14 UTC Douglas VB

     in reply to

     @mcnees And an award at my institution is named after her! The Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Computer Science Award. And also one of clusters in the HPC on campus is named after her.

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 09-Dec-2023 19:15:12 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     • Firefly's Ghost

     @jeaton Check further down the thread – there’s a link to a piece about the history of the term. It had long been in use by the time she found an actual bug in the computer.

   • Firefly's Ghost (jeaton@pnw.zone)'s status on Saturday, 09-Dec-2023 19:15:13 UTC Firefly's Ghost

     in reply to

     @mcnees
     ‘Twas she who coined the term “bug” in computing. She literally found a bug inside a computer. Wrote it up and it lives to this day.

   • The Geoff (_thegeoff@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Dec-2023 00:03:44 UTC The Geoff

     in reply to

     @mcnees
     "You worked on the first proper computer in the US?"

     "Yup, huge thing, several feet wide, it would fit on the corner of a chip these days."

     "How did you know so much about computers back then?"

     "I didn't...it was the first one..."

     Brilliant 😎 🖖

   • seachanged@mastodon.social's status on Sunday, 10-Dec-2023 05:19:26 UTC seachanged

     in reply to

     @mcnees

     She came to my school, once in the late 1970s, and handed out nanoseconds to all that wanted them.