[,alt.religion.wicca,alt.education,alt.religion cut to reduce spamming]
On Mon, 15 Jul 2002 07:46:11 -0400, "Parse Tree" <parsetree at hotmail.com>
wrote:
[..]
>If Grace Murray Hopper really did invent the compiler, then her impact has
>been far beyond that of Marie Curie, and most Nobel Laureates in general.
>http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/hopper.html
It appears that she did invent the compiler, but there does seem to be
some uncertainty. There is a tendency to exaggerate the achievements
of any woman who becomes famous in a field, and the exaggerations
become assumed as fact without the checking that would usually
occur. For example, I have often read that Grace Hopper invented
COBOL, which is not true.
"In 1949 Hopper joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation as a Senior
Mathematician and there she worked with John Eckert and John Mauchly on
the UNIVAC computer. She designed an improved compiler while working for
the company and was part of the team which developed Flow-Matic, the first
English-language data-processing compiler."
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Hopper.html
It appears that she was the person who first created a working compiler.
She may well have been the first person to come up with the idea of a
compiler, which she created in order to make programming more about
the mathematics that the program was to perform than the program
itself (she was a mathematician rather than a programmer). She certainly
did a great deal of work in computing.
However, I would really like to know what went on at Bletchley Park, where
the first programmable computer was invented. People of immense
genius worked there, but all their work was classified to a rather
paranoid extent (which is why most people don't know that the
first modern computer was invented there, to help in breaking
Nazi codes, particularly Enigma) and is still not fully
known. That secrecy hid all sorts of advances in the field of
computing, but the records were destroyed after WWII.
--
Always remember you're unique.
Just like everyone else. (Anon)
