“Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ I try to fight that. That’s why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.”- Grace Hopper.
While working through my online studies and landing on a bootcamp to attend, I’ve been intrigued and happy to see so many references to women in programming in the materials. I wanted to take a closer look at what makes these women noteworthy and inspirational. As I read up on each of them, I was impressed by the vision they had, and the future they saw for computer programming.
I’ll start at the beginning, with the Countess who is now considered by many to be the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace. She was born in 1815, the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the poet. She studied math, science, and language when she was young girl. When she was 17-years-old she became friends with the inventor and mathematics professor Charles Babbage. His inventions were machines, called engines, which were meant to perform mathematical calculations.
Lovelace translated an article on Babbage’s analytical machine from French to English, and while doing so added many notes and comments of her own. In her notes she was able to articulate the possibilities that the machine held, including how the device could handle letters and symbols as well as numbers through codes, and even anticipating the development of computer generated music. Her notes also included her ideas on how to have the machine repeat instructions. Nowadays, we call it looping. Her notes were published in 1843.
Grace Hopper was a rear admiral in the US Navy, and a learned mathematician, earning degrees at Vassar College and Yale University. She encouraged programmers to share common portions of programs. She believed that the way to make computer use more accessible to those who weren’t experts in math or computers was to develop computer-programming languages. She encouraged programmers to share common portions of programs. She and her staff developed a compiler called FLOW-MATIC that could translate statements in English into a language that could be used for business tasks like billing and payroll calculations. At this time, the idea of computers understanding statements made in English was new and something Hopper had to advocate for. FLOW-MATIC influenced the design of COBOL, common business oriented language.
Hopper retired from the Navy in 1986, at 79-years-old,. She was the oldest officer on active U.S. Naval duty at the time she retired. Another interesting fact: Grace Hopper came up with the term “bug” for when a computer isn’t working properly. She came up with this when a moth had gotten into a Mark I, an early computer.
Adele Goldberg participated in the development of Smalltalk-80 along with Alan Kay, a programming language that Steve Jobs went on to use in mac programming. She also helped develop object oriented programming concepts. The work that she and her team did helped replace command line based systems with graphically based user interfaces. She worked with Alan Kay on an article that foresaw regular people using notebook computers to store and manipulate their data, using it as a text editor and as a means of expression, doign tasks such as animating pictures and generating music.
Each of these women was able to imagine the impact computer programming on the world. Ada Lovelace back in the 1840’s imagined looping and computer generated music. Grace Hopper could imagine computer programming as being accessible to more and more people, and the ways to make it happen. Adele Goldberg could imagine the widespread use what sounds like the modern day laptop. What is so inspiring to me about these women is what they could imagine before it seemed possible and the work they contributed to get there.
Sources: https://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html, https://www.biography.com/scholar/ada-lovelace, http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Grace-Hopper,https://www.revolvy.com/page/Adele-Goldberg-%28computer-scientist%29?cr=1, https://www.azquotes.com/quote/553883