CodeHer #3: Grace Hopper
At Codeworks Bootcamp Barcelona, we’re calling them CodeHers. Female computer scientists, techies, developers and programmers.
Join us for this five-part series, shining a light on famous CodeHers throughout history alongside Codeworks students past and present. It’s a small step in a continuing fight against the huge gender gap in the industry.
Discount for Women
Another step we’ve taken is our discount: we offer 10% off course fees for women at our Barcelona Bootcamp. Until we’re teaching both male and female students, in a healthy 50/50 split, we have work to do, positively discriminating towards female applicants.
First, we’ve been shining a light on three women from the past, and two from the present. That means we’re wrapping up the past with none other than Grace Hopper. So, let’s jump back to WW2, circa 1944 when Hopper began her computing career.
Cool CodeHer facts:
- Hopper helped to create the first all-electronic digital computer
- She fought to get in to the Navy and ended up as Rear Admiral. At the age of only 34 she was told she was too old. But she persisted. Eventually, she stayed in the navy so long that she retired twice.
- She took apart alarm clocks as a kid. Just for fun. It’s not hard to see why they nicknamed her Amazing Grace.
- She coined the phrase “a bug in the computer.” While trying to repair a computer in WW2, Grace discovered a moth caught in a relay. She taped the moth in the log book. From that, she then taped the moth into her log book and wrote: “first actual bug found.”
- One of the world’s largest gatherings of technologists, is named after her: The Grace Hopper Celebration. If you’re ever in Texas on your travels, check it out.
Why She’s a Maverick
Where to begin? The woman was phenomenal. And funny too, have a watch of her on the David Letterman show. As Sarah Zinger, a web engineer who volunteered as mentor at the Grace Hopper Program says:
“I don’t think I know anybody who’s a woman in tech who doesn’t know about Grace Hopper. She’s definitely one of the role models that people look toward.”
Hopper was one of the first computer programmers to work on the Harvard Mark I, as Navy Rear Admiral. She helped develop COBOL, one of the first high-level programming languages, (more on COBOL later). But not only that, oh no. Hopper also invented the first compiler, a program that translates programming code to machine language. Interestingly, she saw this computer related technology as her biggest achievement.
With an unfailing optimism, Hopper had a distinctive edge over everyone else in the computer business. She believed that there was always a way to improve on technology. And she improved technology herself, staying curious, keeping it simple, and training others. She stuck at it:
“If you do something once, people will call it an accident. If you do it twice, they call it a coincidence. But do it a third time and you’ve just proven a natural law!”
What Can We Learn From Grace
To understand Hopper’s achievements, we must first understand two things.
Context: Whilst WW2 meant more job opportunities for many women, Hopper’s success in two male-dominated fields, computing and the U.S. Navy. That’s pretty exceptional.
Programming language: COBOL. There are dozens of different languages, including Ada (named after CodeHer#1 Ada Lovelace), Algol, Pascal, Prolog and our friend in this case: COBOL. Ultimately, programs written in a high-level language must be translated into machine language by a compiler or interpreter. COBOL was one of these first high-level programming languages, designed in the 1950s. It might not be as modern as the Javascript that we teach at Codeworks, but COBOL is remarkable. Why? The answer is simple:
Lesson 1: Keep it Simple
Unlike some high-level computer programming languages, COBOL uses English words and phrases to make it easier for ordinary business users to understand. Grace, our ‘Mother of Code, or Grandmother of COBOL’, campaigned for its ordinary English use. COBOL was far simpler than machine code or assembly languages. So when building code, keep it as easy to understand as you can.
Lesson 2: Stay Curious
Grace took apart alarm clocks as a child. Her restless curiosity stayed with her throughout her life, a trait all our CodeHers and students share. Rumour has it she dismantled seven clocks, until her mum realised what her daughter was up to. Grace was then limited to just the one alarm clock!
Lesson 3: Set Standards
In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases on the network. She also pioneered the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components. Setting a high standard for testing your own code, and allowing clear access to that code, whatever the stack, is always a good idea.
Lesson 4: Encourage Your Junior Teammates
Grace was a big believer in mentorship, once saying: “The most important thing I’ve accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, ‘Do you think we can do this?’ I say, ‘Try it.’’ And then I back ’em up.”
Until her death in 1992, Hopper was sought after as an educator of young programmers. She was an early advocate of using shared code libraries too. We have a feeling that if she was with us she would have liked GitHub or Three.js with it’s all its accessibility and forums to help others.
Finally, Hopper believed that programming did not have to be an impossible task. That optimism is a quality that unites all our CodeHers in this series.
Next up #CodeHer4:
For the next instalment in our CodeHers series, we’ll be meeting a Codemaker of today.
She’s a triathlete, bootcamp graduate and front-end developer: Anna Collins. We’re proud of her curiosity and the latest part of her Barcelona-based coding journey. Anna works at Holaluz, and shares Grace Hopper’s philosophy: coding should be kept simple. Watch this space.
