Been Holding Out for Hero

Yes, yes, Bonnie Tyler sings me true. I've been waiting for a new hero (everyone is sick of me spouting about Jakob Neilson, I'm sure) and it is...ta da!! GRACE HOPPER!

First of all, she was the first woman to gain a PhD in Mathematics (uh, Yale, no less).
Grace wrote the first compiler, which led to US government development of COBOL one of the first business oriented computer languages. Yep, this lady was one of the first to create a computer language for programming.

She was forced to retire from the Navy at age 78. She then worked privately giving talks about computing and her career, ALWAYS wearing her full Navy dress uniform. Yep, this lady was staunch.

To quote Wikipedia: "While she was working on a Mark II computer at Harvard University, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the system. Though the term computer bug cannot be definitively attributed to Admiral Hopper, she did bring the term into popularity. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Naval Surface Weapons Center."

Or check out a photo here.

The clincher for me, in my fandom of Grace, was a set of quotes from Wikiquotes.

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. (http://www.chips.navy.mil/links/grace_hopper/86.gif)

Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems
Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) Newsletter, March/April, 1987, No. 167 (editor/author is Philip Schieber)

and these attributed quotes (no source):
The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
The most dangerous phrase in the language is, "We've always done it this way."

Sigh. What a woman.