Mother of Compilers

I believe that this is not the first time that I hear that women are better for computing sciences that men; even though, I should admit that I had never heard about Grace Hopper. It’s interesting considering that the idea of a compiler came out from one of the few women in this area of study, considering that there were a lot of men who could’ve thought about it.

  As I heard in the video, Grace Hopper thought that a compiler would be useful for people that are not so related with mathematics of symbols, she believed that making a computer understand English would be the first step to help people program even if they don’t understand how the machine works at all. Nowadays there are a lot of new compilers that are helping us, as programmers, to communicate with the computer with higher level languages, making it easier for us to create new applications. Even for people who are not related with computing sciences, they can write code due to it’s flexibility and easiness to understand.

  Now, I find interesting that her contribution to the Second World War was about helping scientist solve the equations for making bombs, and that she has also some relation with the creation of the atomic bomb. I believe she was proud of his nation because of their contribution not only to the computing sciences advances but to the navy of their country.

  The last but not less important topic that I want to talk about is feminism. In the video I heard that she wasn’t really interested on the feminism move, she was working just on her skills and trying to do something better for her nation and the world. Even though, I think she’s one example of leaders that did a change without event wanting them. She empowered other women to do the same as her, show that they can do same things as men and even better, work as leaders, innovate in areas of study that were not for women at that time.