Grace Hopper on Letterman

[SteveRiley]

[HalationEffect]

The woman who gave COBOL to the world, and rose to the rank of Rear Admiral. No wonder some called her "Amazing Grace".

I learned COBOL a year or two before she passed away, and even though I never had occasion to use it much after I'd learned it - it was already close to obsolete even then - I still remember IEDP... or the slightly tongue-in-cheek version: i.e. DP.

For those unfamiliar with COBOL, a program written in that language is divided into four 'divisions': Information, Environment, Data, Procedure; hence IEDP. Then some bright spark realised it could be expressed as "i.e. DP" (that is Data Processing). I didn't even need to look any of that up... it's funny what sticks in one's memory even after a couple of decades.

[GreyGeek]

Thanks for that video, Steve. She was an amazing woman, and had a real sense of humor!

[woodsmoke]

A wonderful woman indeed.

I fed ROPEVAL info to the Eniac that was at the Naval Undersea Center, through keypunch operators of course, and she was discussed many times, with very admiring tones.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Thanks for that video, Steve. She was an amazing woman, and had a real sense of humor!

"How did you know so much about computers?"

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

ROFL

[SecretCode]

Apparently she coined the term "bug". Although it was actually a moth.

[woodsmoke]

Just a comment:

"people working ON them".

That is actually a mis-statement. People worked IN them.

woodsmoke