Mother of Compilers

This blog entry is about Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Brewster Murray Hoppe, also known as Amazing Grace, she is the person that built the first compiler and we are going to dedicate this blog entry to talk a little about her accomplishments, how she made history and perhaps how she changed the world.

First of all it is important to talk about her most known accomplishment, creating the A-0 compiler this is the first compiler and well it should be taken as a great accomplishment if we take into account that back in those times men dominated the computer science area and being a woman meant that perhaps your opinion did not matter or that there was a man better suited to do what you were doing. However, she always showed her capacity as a woman to do whatever she wanted to, also being an important member of the army showing everyone that she was unstoppable.

And as unstoppable she was, she was extremely important in the creation of the COBOL language, even getting the nickname of “Mother of Cobol” and as a last thing we should thank her, several things in programming languages like the if/else statements are that way using English language because she thought this was easier to use.

Grace hopper is really an icon for the computer industry and for women around the world. She was not only an army person, she also invented a compiler, and shared her knowledge with many people. She managed to triumph in a place in which women were made less, were not heard or taken into account and perhaps not for me but, I imagine that for many women working in the industry right now, she cleared the way for them in some way.