Mother of Compilers

We have been talking about compilers, what they do and how they work, but we have not talked about the person who created the first compiler. That is why, this time we are going to talk about Grace Hopper, the computer programmer who created the first compiler.

It is important to recall that what she did, creating the A-0 compiler, the first compiler, was a big success if we consider the fact that, back in those times, being a woman and taking part of such great discoveries was not that easy, since men dominated the computer environment. However, she always showed that a woman could do whatever she wants, since she was also a soldier from the army, without letting anyone stop her.

Nevertheless, she did not stopped there, apart from creating a compiler, due to her enormous care to the details, Grace Hopper became the ‘Mother of Cobol’. She did not contributed directly but, thanks to her perseverance, intelligence and determination, she was a true inspiration for creating COBOL.

As you can see, Grace Hopper is a big part of our lives as programmers and that does not stop there, she also was involved in the creation of the ‘debugging’ term.

I am really amazed of all what Grace Hopper did. She was part of the army, invented a compiler, and shared her knowledge with other people. She was an outstanding woman who was not intimidated by what others said about her or her ideas, even though women had not such freedom as we have nowadays.

On the other hand, I think that we have a lot of to learn from her, to be perseverant, to ignore stereotypes and to let other people access our knowledge, share it in order to make the world a better place and help technology advance and improve.