Tech Time Warp of the Week: Watch Grace Hopper, the Queen of Software, Crack Jokes With Letterman

[LiberalArkie]

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My Hero

[LongTomH]

1. I saw a videotaped lecture with Adm. Grace Hopper while I was working with Sabre (American Airlines)

.........in Tulsa. "Amazing Grace" was one of the great pioneers in computer programming. She continues to be an inspiration to women in computing.

[LiberalArkie]

2. I almost met her once in NYC when I was a young pup working as a civi for the DOD

[edgineered]

3. briefly met,

and had a few words with her while statistician for NRD Miami. Her visit was with the CO, for the rest of us we were the dogs and ponies. It was in '84 or '85, pre windows of course. Everything was DOS or Basic, SuperCal 3, DBase 2, Word Perfect. Batch commands with pauses, converting 1200 baud data streams to CSV files for DBase scripts to update,,,

Still use some of the old tricks!!!

[valerief]

4. Thanks. She was great. And her COBOL is still greatly in use. nt

[dballance]

5. That was Great! But I totally hated COBOL.

I had to learn it in college after having learned BASIC earlier.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

6. My Grace Hopper story

In the early 1980s, she gave a talk at the Bell Labs installation where I was then working. In the Q and A session afterwards, I asked her, "You intended COBOL to be self documenting, so that any manager could look at some COBOL code and be able to tell what the code was doing. In your experience, how many managers have actually done this?" She laughed and said, "As far as I know, none."

She used to give out what she called "nanoseconds". Since the speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second, in a nanosecond, light will travel 30 centimeters. So she would hand out 30 cm lengths of wire to give us an idea of what a nanosecond actually was. Unfortunately, mine was lost some years ago.

[Old Crow]

7. Well, you should watch this video then...

...because she has Dave pick out a "nanosecond" from a collection in her purse. (I'm assuming you didn't watch the video based on your comment; if you did, my apologies.)

Also, I have to say it: As funny as David Letterman can be, he is a weak interviewer. There were several awkward moments here, when Dave has no idea what to ask and isn't able to intelligently follow up on her comments. He introduced Grace by noting that she was one of the most distinguished guests his program had ever had. Would it have killed him to spend three to five minutes reading up on her background so that, for example, he might've asked her a question or two about COBOL?

[tclambert]

8. I thought for sure she'd tell the story of finding the first computer bug.

It was a moth. Got caught in the circuitry.

[I hate liars]

9. Just as remarkable was her foresight concerning natural resource shortages...

I heard Adm Hopper speak twice, once when I was in the Comp Sci program at North Carolina and again at an industry conference. I still have a couple of nanoseconds sitting in a drawer, somewhere.

Both times she ended her speech talking about how important preservation of groundwater is. She predicted shortages of clean water in the future, and the actions of Nestle and other big businesses (not to mention Bush Sr) buying up land sitting on aquifers is evidence that she was right.

Remarkable lady.

[sdfernando]

10. She as the speaker at my college graduation from a technical college

She must have been in her mid-80s by then. She was graceful and funny...with a devastatingly sharp intellect! What a joy to hear her speak and her views and where technology came from and where it was going.

[left-of-center2012]

11. Excellent

Thanks for posting. I've passed it along on Delphi Forums.