Challenging “We’ve Always Done It This Way”
Grace Hopper hated that phrase. Indeed, it stood in her way more than once.
In 1949, Hopper became a senior mathematician with the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and joined the development team of the UNIVAC I computer. The UNIVAC I was to be the first of its kind. Grace believed that processing power could be condensed into systems realistic for mass production, and primarily, that programming languages could be revolutionized with plain language.
However, Dr. Hopper received significant resistance to this idea. “Computers don’t understand English,” she was told. But Grace persisted and published her first paper on her compiler in 1952.
A stubborn industry was not easy to convince. “I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it,” she said, “they told me computers could only do arithmetic.” Nonetheless, she went on to develop COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) and eventually revolutionized standardized programming across the whole Navy and into the commercial market.
Within two years, she became Remington Rand’s first-ever automatic programming director and developed industry-shaping languages like FLOW-MATIC.
