Grace Murray Hopper Invents General Programming Languages

Grace Hopper is one of the most important pioneers in the development of computer programming. Hopper pioneered the concept of automatic programming and in 1952 she developed the first compiler (A-0). Most critically, Hopper was the first to write programs in words rather than symbols. By 1957 she had completed FLOW-MATIC (B-0), the first English-language business data processing compiler. FLOW-MATIC became the main model for COBOL, specified in 1959 by a committee drawn from computer manufacturers and the Pentagon on which Hopper served as technical adviser, as a language capable of operating on different types of computers. Hopper thus enabled general computer languages, which would profoundly and irrevocably impact computer technology in the long-term. In the short-term, it also helped to significantly expand the number of people who could interact with computers.