Celebrating the creator of Cobol
By Mark Ward
Technology correspondent, BBC News website
The 100th anniversary of the birth of programming language pioneer Grace Hopper was celebrated on 9 December. Widely credited as being the "mother" of the Cobol computer language her work was hugely influential.
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A look below the surface of the computer world uncovers some very old technology - such as the Cobol programming language. The COmmon Business Oriented Language was created in 1959 and, though it is no longer taught in schools and universities, you still bump up against it every day.
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Dr Hopper, who had a PhD in mathematics, gained her familiarity with computers thanks to the US Navy. She joined the US Naval Reserve in 1943 and was put to work on the Mark 1 Calculator - one of the first digital computers.
She went on to work on the Univac - the first commercial computer in the US - and it was at this time she did the pioneering work that led to Cobol.
Standard issue
Her inspiration was to create a computer language that read more like real English rather than the tortuous machine code used by many other programming languages of the time.
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more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6168489.stmAs every hacker knows, Hopper was responsible for introducing the technical term "bug" -- the first bug being a dead moth, found in the guts of a large (vacuum-tube) mainframe, which she taped into here notebook. A well-earned salute to a true pioneer.