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Tangent: The phrase "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission" is attributed to Grace Hopper[1], who developed the first compiler(!) and
by hallman76 15y ago
Tangent:
The phrase "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission" is attributed to Grace Hopper[1], who developed the first compiler(!) and is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches.
The phrase has always resonated with me and I was blown away to see that it originated with a pioneer in computer science.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
- batista 15y agoand I was blown away to see that it originated with a pioneer in computer science And also, a woman. Like, the first programmer, IIRC (Ada Lovelace). It took a woman to first get us programming, and another one to write the first compiler. Just a trivia to keep in mind.
- kylebrown 15y agoIIRC, originally a "computer" was a term which referred to a (generally female) person, whose job was to feed numbers into an adding machine / calculator. So it makes sense that the first programmers would have been women; it was (is) a secretarial position of repetitive, mundane tasks below an idea-thinking boss-man. That programmers are now ~90% male, is surely just further evidence that the tables are turning, and women will be running the world soon. jk (kinda)