Was Grace Hopper really the first?

Is it true she invented the first compiler/linker or is that just revisionist nonsense?

she mad the first cobalt compiler, and contributed hugely the the computer science field.

>>16484 May 1952 is when Grace Hopper published Education of a Computer more information https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/609784.609818 or see the attached file. Wikipedia further clarifies from its History_of_compiler_construction article First_compilers section The first practical compiler was written by Corrado Böhm, in 1951, for his PhD thesis. The first implemented compiler was written by Grace Hopper, who also coined the term "compiler", referring to her A-0 system which functioned as a loader or linker, not the modern notion of a compiler. The first Autocode and compiler in the modern sense were developed by Alick Glennie in 1952 at the University of Manchester for the Mark 1 computer. The FORTRAN team led by John W. Backus at IBM introduced the first commercially available compiler, in 1957, which took 18 person-years to create. http://www.homepages.ed.ac.uk/jwp/history/autocodes/ has more information on the Autocodes. See second attachment for the revised version of Corrado Böhm PHD thesis. With regards to your limited single question the answer is it depends. It depends what you mean by first. It depends what you mean by compiler. It depends what you mean by linker. Certainly from the evidence above, Grace Hopper was one of several people working on UNIVAC and Mark 1 in this space in the earlier stages, and she coined the term compiler, and she made a software program called a compiler which behaved like a modern linker in the period between 1951 and May 1952.

nein

>>16496 She coined two common terms (compiler and debugging) in computer science? Heh, that is pretty cool. Thank you for the Education of a Computer print out, it was a mighty enjoyable read, especially seeing how it mentioned that it should be do-able for college sophomores. It is quite surprising, back then expectations for what people are capable of doing compared to now is way different.

>>16561 yeup, nowadays you're treated like a child all through college

>>16484 I care about programming too, but to be honest whether Grace Hopper wrote the first compiler seems utterly irrelevant to me. It seems like the kind of thing someone would "question" in order to advance a thesis that feminism is destroying society or some horse soykaf. Glad this thread didn't go that way.

I like Grace Hopper. I think generally whenever someone is claimed to be the "first" it says more about who makes the claim than who it is about. It really just means that either everyone was probably doing at the time and the claim is just very carefully worded to barely hold, or that when the person was doing it "first" just nobody gave a soykaf. These "first" people are often humble and are being used by the often anonymous entity who's making the claim. Moral: sentences containing "first" are to be taken with a soykafload of salt and you should immediately focus on why someone is suddenly making the claim

To answer the question she did invent whatever she did and it's reasonably true that she was first but the latter doesn't matter. Basically look at her soykaf over the years, she always was awesome.

>>16561 >it is quite surprising, back then expectations for what people are capable of doing compared to now is way different. I don't see anything surprising in it to be honest. Back then a lot of computing was carta blanca - you had to be really lazy and do nothing of own initiative to not invent new way of using computers. It was around 20 years before 1st UNIX started circulating outside lab. Also computers they operated on were so primitive more sharp brained primary schooler could have grasped more or less how they work. Up until late 80s every teenager could have learn ASM on his 8bit microcomputer using just compiler and disassembler and his computer manual in his bedroom. That's stopped being as easy when 1st IBM PCs arrived with more complicated bullshit Intel architecture and operating systems and programs running on them arrived and whole device started to be a lot more complicated. 70 years later to invent something of particular matter in computer science you have to work with much broader and complicated set of knowledge.

>>18659 for example the current carta blanca of computing is quantum computing. But currently its hard to enter that field both because it requires familiarity with at least part of QM and access to present day primitive noisy "quantum" computing cores is expensive as fuarrrk.

>>18657 The more and more I read up on history the more I realize that nothing ever gets invented, or at least not in the way we think they do. Let me put it this way; you could remove any major inventor from history and their inventions (or at least things greatly resembling them) would've shown up at some point anyway.

>>18657 lol for some reason this reminds me of those people who rush to a new video or blog or whatever just to jump into the comments and post "first!" like an asshole. So glad those fuсkers are finally starting to get weary of it and give up, ugh.

>>18668 That's logic for you, always has the same outcome for the same inputs.

>>18668 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/was-einstein-the-first-to-invent-e-mc2/

>>16484 Nope she's legit 100%!! I've heard she was a super nice lady and good naval officer too.

>>18691 lol my abstract algebra professor once went on a rant about how einstein gets way too much credit for that

>>18668 I dont think thats true. There's ancient metallurgy discoveries that havent been replicated which suggests there are mutliple routes through the "tech tree" of human civilization. Things wouldve looked very different if Charles Babbage actually built his Analytical Engine and it was successful leading to steampunk computers. Or if a plan9 like OS had become the norm we'd have different architecture now.

>>20522 Yeah it's hard to imagine life without inventions in retrospect. I think the analytical engine is a fantastic example. That soykaf had so much application and demand at the time and yet humanity sat on that soykaf. Then IBM built tons of mechanical computers and for whatever reason never made the small leap to turing complete machines. I don't think it would have turned out like neal stephenson but it would have been fuarrrking huge.

>>20513 And he was right. The work he did was important, but most of pieces was not done by him. It's more like compilation of works by different authors plus theoretical mendeling and filling gaps.

Who did X first? Depends whom you ask. If someone ask you who constructed first movie camera probably most of you would say Lumiere brothers. The truth is at least one person did it before them - about a year before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Pr%C3%B3szy%C5%84ski and to be honest I have fogy memories of possible one another inventor. It strange how Lumier have credit as Prószyński among other things was the one who was officially chosen for filming of King of England coronation ceremony and his camera was offcially aproved to be used by British military. https://poland.pl/science/famous-scientists/kazimierz-proszynski-18751945-inventor-who-preceded-lumiere-brot/ Or who invented jeans? The guy who is popular to get credit - Davis were not first ever denim trousers creator (denim originated in Europe), he was the on who supposedly first used rivets to reinforce pockets. At least he acquired patent for that. The problem is reinforcing materials with rivets is not his invention - it had wide use in for example leatherworks - like blacksmith's aprons, military carbine belts,leather luggage, leather and canvas bags. Literally ages before 19th century. The more I think about that the more I wonder how de fuarrrk he even acquired that patent for quiet obvious solution - in his case the only supposedly original part would be the use of denim and possibly cut of his trousers. I would not be surprised if someone else had same idea about denim and rivets before in the US or elsewhere in the world or independently after. Or who took first X-ray photos? In common public Wilhelm Roentgen is known for that. The truth is he was at least the third person who actually did that. The 2nd being Nikola Tesla and the 1st ever was Ukrainian Ivan Puluj https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Puluj in Austria Hungary Empire. Probably many other stuff some people are wildly credited for doing "first" was done by someone else before or around the same time without knowing. Some such examples as presented above emerge finally but it seems they have hard time reaching general publicity.