Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992)
U S Naval officer, and an early computer programmer.
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The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. ... they carefully told me, computers could only do arithmetic; they could not do programs.
I've always been more interested in the future than in the past.
To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.
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.
I handed my passport to the immigration officer, and he looked at it and looked at me and said, "What are you?"
In total desperation, I called over to the engineering building, and I said, "Please cut off a nanosecond and send it over to me."
From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.
Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.
You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington.
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.
A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things.
But Grace, then anyone will be able to write programs!
It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.
At present, we're putting on paper a lot of stuff that never needed to be on paper. We do need to keep the records. But there isn't any reason for printing them. The next generation growing up with the computers will change that.
I've received many honors and I'm grateful for them; but I've already received the highest award I'll ever receive, and that has been the privilege and honor of serving very proudly in the United States Navy.
At the end of about a week, I called back and said, "I need something to compare this to. Could I please have a microsecond?"
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