96 - Grace Hopper

Today Google had Grace Hopper on the cover of their page as their Google Doodle. I had heard of Grave Hopper before but damn, I had not heard enough. She was amazing. She did so many things for computers that it is really actually quite difficult to imagine the world without her. A few of the favorite things about her that I like are the fact that she popularized the term "Bug" in a computer program. While the term had been used by engineers before her, she referred to the instance of finding a moth in the mainframe that she was working on, and which was preventing her program to run correctly, as a "bug in the system".

Wow, the actual "Bug" in that was in her program...

She invented the first compiler, a program that would take 1's and 0's (Machine Code) and turn it into a human readable form. But there was something really cool I heard a Kurt Beyer recalling on attending a talk she was giving. At the age of 80 her topic was about the future. The future of personal computer, the future of how people will comminicate. She looked ahead, not back.

Do yourself a favor and take a moment to look at this page about her:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper