Grace Hopper was a US Navy rear admiral, mathematician, and the person who built the first compiler.
In 1952, she wrote A-0 – a program that translated mathematical notation into machine code.
Before the compiler, every program was written in machine language.
Binary instructions. Ones and zeros. Different for every machine architecture.
Hopper's idea: write code in something closer to English.
Let a program translate it into machine language automatically.
Her supervisors told her it was impossible.
Computers, they said, could only do arithmetic – not symbol manipulation.
She did it anyway.
Her compiler worked.
Nobody used it.
"I had a running compiler," she later said, "and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic."
She spent three years convincing people it was real before it was adopted.
By 1959, she co-developed COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) which ran the financial systems of the Western world for decades.
COBOL still processes an estimated $3 trillion in daily financial transactions.
The code that keeps the global economy moving was designed by a woman whose supervisors told her it was impossible.
She kept a clock on her wall that ran counter-clockwise.
When asked why, she said: "Why not? Who says a clock has to run this way?"
@rachelnabors You are, totally, one of a kind, @rachelnabors, lol. The whole word is not full of people like you -- inside and outside, Lady.
I wish you a very good and happy day!