Grace Hopper: The Queen of Code

You probably don’t know the name Grace Hopper, but you should. As a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hopper worked on the first computer, the Harvard Mark 1. And she headed the team that created the …

Rear Admiral “Amazing” Grace Hopper was one of the first (and finest) computer programmers in history. She was also a badass mofo, blazing against institutional blockheadedness her entire (extremely long) career. She created the first compiler and spearheaded the creation of COBOL, one of the first compiled computer languages – opening up the field of programming to people who didn’t have high-level math degrees.

Here’s a short video on her (directed by Gillian Jacobs of Community fame). As a heads up: if you’re using AdBlock, you may need to disable it to watch the video.