Turning Dreams into Reality: The Life and Legacy of “Amazing Grace” Hopper: Version 2
Hello everyone, what you are about to read right here is a more complex version of my second article: “Turning Dreams into Reality: The Life and Legacy of ‘Amazing Grace’ Hopper.” Given that I am still new to the world of writing and publishing, I thought to get a better idea as to what I should write about, I should show you guys both the original and simplified versions and have you choose which one you like better. Without further adue, here is the original version of my second article with some minor changes.

Much like her predecessor, Ada Lovelace, “Amazing Grace” Hopper (Grace Brewster Murray Hopper), who was one of the first women to serve in the United States Navy during World War II, shared a well-rounded family background, as well as a passion for discovering the unknown. Both of which helped her to become one of the leading ladies of the Computer Science world. Not only did her mother, a mathematics connoisseur, encourage her to pursue her studies in Math and Science, her husband, an English teacher, indirectly encouraged her to study English. This influential background of hers helped her to develop two of the most important inventions of the early twentieth century: the computer compiler, a device that translates machine code into human language, and manual, a cryptic looking device that highlights both the history and the working mind of mathematicians, philosophers, scientists, and rebels. Though Lovelace already had the ideas as to what the ideal computer and computer scientist should be like, it was not until a hundred years after her death when Hopper made her ideas into a reality, which in turn made Computer Science into both an art and a science.
Long before the computer became the modern necessity that it is today, inventors and scientists saw the computer as nothing more than a machine that is only capable for the more mathematical professional types. Given that the only things that a computer could read at the time were literally inputs of 1s and 0s, it would seem that the only types of people who were able to use the computer were mathematicians and other people with technical backgrounds. However, with the invention of the first computer compiler, Hopper was able to prove that computers could definitely, “speak English”, as well as many other human languages that create the words, images, and sounds that come onto our screens and out of our speakers.
Though this process created “a black box” between the user and the machine, thereby preventing the user from understanding what is going on inside the computer as it interprets the user’s input and computes the user’s output, it nevertheless gave even the most common of people to appreciate the computer for what it is and therefore turn the computer into a symbol of lifelong learning and appreciation of the liberal arts education.

To help combat “the black box” issue, Grace Hopper wrote the first computer manual, which (at least in theory) made it easier for even the most basic of programmers to use the computer, depending on who and what the manual was for at least. In the case of the invention of the Mark I manual (1946), in addition to images and diagrams, Grace Hopper also incorporated mathematical proofs and historical anecdotes in order for mathematicians (at the time) to compute solutions to their own mathematical problems while giving them a voice in human society for future generations to listen to.
Though we often take computer manuals for granted today as “wasted stacks of papers for nerds to ponder over while the whole Amazon rainforest is chopped to bits”, in truth, they are liberal documents that stand as evidence as the Humanities and the Sciences can coexist with one another, which in turn would give Computer Science its rightful mark of being considered a liberal art as demonstrated by Hopper herself. For better or worse, they are also hotspots for programmers, scientists, and mathematicians to show off their written, drawing, and problem-solving abilities.
Today, the “ideal” computer scientist is viewed as a single person sitting inside his/her lonely cubical, typing mechanical drivel that operates our computers (and our lives) while slurping on instant ramen noodles and other fast-foods. However, in a time when Computer Science was still at its elementary stage, this was far from the truth. As shown by the lives of Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace, a computer scientist demonstrates more than how to use a computer, a computer scientist demonstrates a love for learning in and out of the digital world. While Lovelace created the vision, Hopper made that vision into a reality. This is not to say that idealists such as Lovelace do not have a place in Computer Science. Without them, people such as Grace Hopper would not be able to turn dreams into reality. After all, Hopper herself was also an idealist. Without her, the world of computing would forever remain ignorant of the outside world of humanities and ethics, both of which helped to define the computer as more than just a calculating device.



Link to Mark I manual: http://sites.harvard.edu/~chsi/markone/manual.html
