Excuse me, who first invented the compilation software?

Grace Murray Hopper

Introduction

On January 7, 1992, at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, the U.S. Navy paid tribute to the woman who died peacefully in her sleep in the early morning of New Year's Day. A grand funeral was held for retired naval officer Grace Murray Hopper. The naval honor guard and many solemn naval officers and soldiers paid their final farewell to this respected elder in accordance with naval etiquette. Thousands of Americans watched the funeral live on television. Four years later, on January 6, 1996, the U.S. Navy held a grand naming ceremony for its newly built Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in Bath, Maine, naming it "Hebe". This is the first time since World War II and the second time in the entire history of the U.S. Navy that a warship has been named after a woman.

Enlightenment

Grace Hopper (1906–1992), whose surname was Murray, and Hopper was her husband's surname. Born on December 9, 1906 in a naval family in New York, USA, his grandfather had the rank of Major General. Her maternal grandfather was a senior civil engineer and often took her to work, and she was very happy to help hold the red and white measuring poles, which cultivated her interest in geometry and mathematics. Grace's father had both legs amputated due to arteriosclerosis and was hospitalized for a long time. This made her, the eldest daughter, more sensible and diligent since she was a child.

Grace recalled that her favorite class when she was a child was mathematics, especially geometry. Because in geometry class, she can take out all the colored pens in the pencil box and use them. Although she is a girl, she likes to play with various protractors and slide rules and study their principles and functions. She also did some things that were very much like boys: when she was six or seven years old, she took apart all the clocks in the house, but none of them successfully put them back together, so she was severely punished.

Education

Before entering college, Grace attended the private Wardlaw-Hartridge School. In 1928, she graduated from Vassar College with a double bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics. While in school, she was a member of the Phi-Beta-Kappa Society (PBK), a group of more than 200 students. It is a very good and powerful student association with a history of 18 years. Bush, Clinton, and Updike were all members.) He then entered Yale University to study for a master's degree in mathematics, receiving his master's degree in 1930. On June 15, 1930, she married Vincent Foster Hopper (Vincent was a professor of English at New York University and died in 1945. He and Hopper had no children). Not long after her marriage, Grace decided to pursue a Ph.D., so she studied for a Ph.D. at Yale University while teaching, and obtained her degree in 1934. It only took four years, which was considered quite fast. Her doctoral thesis was titled "A New Criterion for Reducibility of Algebraic Equations", but what surprised many people was that she used geometric methods to prove this criterion. As a woman, getting a PhD in mathematics is a big accomplishment because achieving a PhD in mathematics is inherently difficult. According to statistics, from 1862 to 1934, the U.S. General Administration awarded 1,279 doctorates, an average of less than 18 per year, and women receiving doctorates in mathematics are even rarer. In terms of job hunting, female mathematicians can usually only teach in high schools, and it is extremely difficult for them to hope to be on the university stage, but Grace did it: she was hired by her alma mater, Vassar College, after graduating with a master's degree, and was promoted from a teaching assistant to an associate professor in just a few years. However, at this stage, we don't see her having anything to do with computers.

Turning

1941 was a turning point in Grace’s life. After the Pearl Harbor incident, Grace had the idea of ??joining the military. She wanted to join the Navy. At that time, women who joined the army were mostly reservists, and most of them were nurses or did logistics. Women with higher education were assigned to work related to computing. Due to family tradition, she chose to join the Navy's WAVES organization (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service). After training at the Naval Academy in Northampton, MA, she was awarded the rank of captain. Considering her mathematical background, she was sent to Harvard University to participate in Mark I under Professor Howard Aiken (1900-1973). development work. Professor Aiken received a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard in 1939 and was the designer and manufacturer of the Mark I, II, III, and IV series of motor computers.

Digression: The original name of Mark I was ASCC (Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator). It was built by a joint venture between Harvard University and IBM. It was completed in 1943. It weighed 35 tons and had 500 miles of internal wiring. However, after the Mark I inauguration ceremony in 1944, IBM and Harvard fell out. The reason was that Harvard believed that IBM was just a rich man who contributed money. The main intellectual contributions were the work of Harvard people. IBM believed that it had also done engineering work. A lot of research and innovation, but Harvard considers those engineering innovations not worth mentioning. (Sorry...) So IBM withdrew from Harvard's Mark project. Over the next decade, IBM's main partner in academia became Columbia University. (They are all awesome schools among awesome schools...)

Grace has been fond of all kinds of slide rules since she was a child. When she walked into the Harvard Computing Factory and saw this motor computer, she said it was hers. The funniest slide rule I've ever seen. Before her, two boys had written programs on Mark, and these two boys later helped Grace write her first program in three days. So in total, Grace is the third person in the world to write programs on motor computers. The photo below is the staff of Project Mark. Sitting in the middle is Professor Aiken, the only woman is Grace Hopper, with Mark I in the background.

The Harvard Mark Team

Glory

September 1945 On the 9th, an anecdote that was very important to the computer world happened. The weather was very hot that day, so the staff opened the windows, and then a moth flew in. As a result, the moth died in a relay, causing the circuit to fail and the machine to crash. They were unable to calculate the results they wanted. After nearly a day of inspection, Grace found the moth. She managed to use her hairpin to get the moth out. She also posted the moth's body on her management log, which read: "That's it. This bug prevented us from completing today's work." After the news spread, people in that laboratory always blamed the bug when the boss asked why the results had not been produced. (People in that laboratory. What a blessing...)

Since then, the two originally ordinary words "bug" (bug) and "debug" (bug removal) have become special terms in the field of computer science. The special vocabulary of "error" and "error elimination" has been passed down to this day. The photo below is of the moth and Grace's record at that time.

Grace Hopper's Bug

After the end of World War II, all reservists were supposed to retire, but Grace Hopper decided to resign from her teaching position at Vassar College to concentrate on Aiken's experiments Be a programmer in the room. In 1949, Grace left Harvard and came to Philadelphia to join the Eckert-Mauchley Computer Corporation (Eckert-Mauchley Computer Corporation) as a senior mathematician. Her main job was to design software. The first electronic computer designed by this company was also the third electronic computer in the world, called UNIVAC I. In 1950, the company was acquired by Remington Rand due to poor management. Not long after, Remington Rand merged with several small companies to form Sperry. Grace had been working as a senior mathematician and programmer in this company until she retired at the age of 65 in 1971. She left the company.

Grace has made considerable contributions to the computer industry, and the reference to the term Bug is actually just a small episode. Her greatest contribution was the invention of the world's first compiler, called A-0. At that time, no assembly language or programming language existed, and all programmers had to translate programs into machine code. , that is, in the form of "0011000101011", punch holes in the paper and send it to the machine for reading. After Grace entered the Eckert-Mauchley Company, she had an idea. She wanted to design a program that would allow people to write down what they wanted to do using a grammar similar to English, and then use this program to translate English into machine language. Grammar, leave it to the machine to execute. This idea is today's Compiler. When she proposed this idea, everyone said no. Everyone told her that computers can only do calculations and process numbers. Computers do not understand English. In the 1950s, most people did not realize that computers were tools for processing information. Everyone thought that computers were just calculators. Grace Hopper was probably the first person to think of this problem and get the chance to do it. Since then, she has been giving lectures to raise funds for the project.

During this period, many friends asked her: "Why are you so brave? What should you do if you mess up?" Grace replied:

"It is always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."

(It will be much easier to apologize in the future than to get the money now.)

This sentence later became one of the wise words of her life.

When writing the world's first compiler A-0, in order to show off to the boss who could pay for it, Grace also designed three versions: English version, German version, and French version, showing that The compiler not only understands English, but also understands German and French. But later the German and French versions of the compiler were no longer developed. By 1956, she had developed a complete programming language called FLOW-MATIC. The Navy adopted this system (Grace was still a member of the Navy at this time). Because the navy has a vast territory, if each locality slightly modifies a small part of the compiler, the problem will arise that the program in place A cannot be executed in place B. So Grace wrote a set of programs to check whether these programs use the same compilation method, called Validation. Later, it affected the private sector and gradually developed a new language, which was biased towards commercial use of syntax. This set of The programming language is the famous COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language). This is also Grace Hopper's second major contribution to the computer industry. In fact, at that time, there were only three programming languages: COBOL, ART, and FORTRAN (product of IBM). Some people called Grace the "Mother of COBOL", although this title was opposed by some people in the academic world (because She did not directly participate in the design of the COBOL language), but her important role in the formation and development of COBOL is unanimously recognized by the world. According to statistics in the early 1980s, 80% of running programs in the United States were written in COBOL language. This shows the role that COBOL language plays in the development of computer applications.

The following photo is of Grace presenting the award to Donald E. Knuth (a god-like existence). The former is one of the early leaders in creating computer programming languages, and the latter is one of the contemporary leaders in computer programming algorithms. This is a rare group photo. (Powerful aura, tears running down...)

Grace & Knuth

In 1966, Grace Hopper turned 60 years old. Her rank at the time was Navy Lieutenant Colonel, and Navy Lieutenant Colonel should retire at the age of 60. On the day she retired, Grace said it was the saddest day in her life because others had told her she was too old. But soon, the Navy found that it couldn't do without Grace - there was a payroll management program that was rewritten 823 times and still couldn't run properly. Therefore, just half a year after she retired from the Navy, she was recalled to serve again by the Navy. She was responsible for the standardization and popularization of high-level language for naval system computers. She worked for 20 years until she officially retired on August 14, 1986. During this period, her military rank was repeatedly promoted, and she was promoted to major general in 1985. Since this exceeds the age for military service required by U.S. law, Congress also passed a special law to legalize Grace's appointment. At the grand ceremony where Grace was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal and celebrated her retirement aboard the USS Constitution in Boston, Grace proudly said in her speech that she was the last member of WAVES to leave. Post: She was told at age 40 that she was too old to continue serving in the military, yet she stayed in uniform for another 40 years!

While returning to the Navy, she served as Several directors or consultants of the Naval Computing Center, commanding technical personnel of the Navy, go around giving speeches to promote her ideas. Among them, there is a very interesting and famous thing. During her speech, she always failed to make the audience understand what a nanosecond (a billionth of a second) is. How long is a nanosecond? And how much is the difference between a microsecond (a millionth of a second) and a nanosecond? This is difficult to explain because they are both extremely short periods of time, but they are a thousand times different. Grace came up with an idea. She went to the engineering department and cut a section of wire. This section of wire was 11.78 inches (approximately 0.3 meters) long. She took the nearly 1-foot wire and told the audience: "This length is the length of the electric wave in a The distance that a nanosecond can travel." At the same time, she took several bundles of wires and put them on the table, almost 1,000 feet (about 300 meters), and then she said: "This length is the distance that the radio wave can travel in a microsecond. ” At this point, the audience understands. So she said: "You must be careful and never waste a microsecond of electricity.

”

Meanwhile, there was a senator who had never met Grace. But after he heard about this person, he did some research privately, and then took the initiative to file an application for Grace in Congress. . He believed that such an important woman should not only be a captain in the navy, but that she should be a general officer. Congress quickly passed the proposal and then notified the navy, which promoted Grace. In November 1985, Grace became a rear admiral, the first woman in the United States to reach this rank. In 1986, at the age of seventy-nine, she was the oldest living U.S. military officer who has not yet retired. At that time, she was about to officially retire.

End

More than 2,000 people came to the party where Grace retired, some of whom she knew, and some of whom she did not know. She signed a contract with Digital Company, who hired her to speak on their behalf and promote their company's products. Digital's main product at that time was the Minicomputer. In fact, the PC had already appeared in 1986, and it was called Microcomputer. In the Navy, Grace Hopper is one of the people who strongly promotes the use of PCs. She also has a famous saying in this regard. She said that in ancient times, people used oxen and horses to pull things. Later, human society developed more and more, and things became more and more popular. It's getting heavier, but instead of using bigger and stronger species to move things, people are using more oxen and horses to do the heavier work. She uses this metaphor to say that computers shouldn't get heavier. To make things bigger, we should use small, large numbers of computers to do what we need to do (it turns out that Grace proposed parallel computing more than 20 years ago?)

Grace Hopper passed away in January 1992. In the early morning of the 1st, after attending the New Year Party, the exact time is unknown. One of her wishes during her lifetime was to live until the night of December 31, 1999, because she said she wanted to attend that party. Obviously, Grace loved parties.

Grave of Grace

Postscript

Grace Hopper is a very amazing person (often called Amazing Grace), and there are quite a few people who admire her. . Although she has many deeds, there are many people with similar deeds who are not as admired by everyone as she is. We can see from one of them: starting in 1947 (the second year after the end of World War II), she won. The first honorary doctorate (University of Pennsylvania), since then, she has been awarded honorary doctorates by more than 40 universities, including various women's social groups and academic organizations such as the University of Chicago, the University of Washington, and the University of Maryland. Grace has been awarded various titles and awards. In 1991, President Bush awarded her the National Medal of Technology at the White House, which is the highest award. She is also the only American woman to receive this honor. She has many famous sayings, her own favorite is also her favorite to say to the so-called "young people" (when she was old, her so-called young people were "people less than half my age are called young"). "People"), this sentence is:

"A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."

Quotations

There are some interesting words in Grace's quotations below.

From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.

The most dangerous phrase in the language is, “We've always done it this way."

Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, "We've always done it this way." I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.

Leadership is a two-way street, loyalty up and loyalty down. Respect for one's superiors; care for one's crew.

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.

Someday, on the corporate balance sheet, there will be an entry which reads, “Information”; For in most cases, the information is more valuable than the hardware which processes it.

We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.

To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.

They told me computers could only do arithmetic.

In pioneer days they used oxen for heavy pulling, and when one ox couldn't budge a log, they didn't try to grow a larger ox. We shouldn't be trying for bigger computers, but for more systems of computers.

Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.

We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington.< /p>

At any given moment, there is always a line representing what your boss will believe. If you step over it, you will not get your budget. Go as close to that line as you can.

I seem to do a lot of retiring.

I handed my passport to the immigration officer, and he looked at it and looked at me and said, “What are you?”

References

Wikipedia: ?

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