Grace Hopper: The OG of Computer Science

By Melita Clarice

20 NOV 2024

Grace Hopper was a tech genius way ahead of her time. She didn’t just work on computers but she pretty much helped invent how we use them today. Her life story is a mix of brains, grit, and breaking all kinds of barriers, especially for women in tech.


Born in 1906 in New York City, Hopper loved figuring out how things worked. As a kid, she even took apart clocks just to see how they ticked. That curiosity stuck with her. After studying math and physics at Vassar College, she went on to earn a PhD in math from Yale, super impressive, especially back then when women rarely got into higher education.


During WWII, Hopper joined the U.S. Navy Reserve and got assigned to work on the Mark I, one of the first ever computers. This massive machine wasn’t like a regular laptop, it filled an entire room. Hopper wrote programs for it, basically teaching the computer how to “think.”


In 1949, Grace joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in Philadelphia as a senior mathematician. The company had built the first electronic computer under army contracts. 


Grace worked on the UNIVAC I and II and pioneered the idea of automatic programming, exploring new ways to use the computer to code. In 1952 she developed the first compiler called A-0, which translated mathematical code into machine-readable code, an important step toward creating modern programming languages.


She helped design COBOL, a programming language still used in business and banking. Yup, her work might be running the ATMs you use.


She popularized “Debugging” Hopper once found a literal bug (a moth) messing up a computer. That’s how we got the term “debugging” for fixing problems.

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Grace Hopper was a boss in the Navy too, eventually becoming a rear admiral (that’s a really high rank). She retired a few times, but they kept calling her back because how good she was. Even in her later years, she toured colleges, telling students to challenge the status quo and innovate.


Hopper died in 1992, but her impact lives on. There’s a massive conference named after her 'Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC)' where women in tech come together to learn, network, and inspire each other. She even got the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 2016.


Grace Hopper once said, “The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’” Her whole life proves that shaking things up is how we make progress. So, if you’re into tech or just want to become innovative, take a page out of Grace Hopper’s book!