Título: Grace Hopper
Seção: Anecdotes
Background: Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (nee Murray; December 9, 1906 - January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first compiler related tools. She popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today. Hopper had attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II, but she was rejected by the military because she was 34 years of age and thus too old to enlist.

Conteúdo: Throughout much of her later career, Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL".  While she was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging." For many years, the term bug had been in use in engineering. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.  Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds." She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why comput

user: What was an anecdote about Hopper?

assistant: Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid.

user: What did she use for her nanoseconds visual aid?

assistant: She started handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.80 inches = 300 millimeters)--the distance that light travels in one nanosecond.

user: Did she use any other visual aids?

assistant: she passed out packets of pepper, calling the individual grains of ground pepper picoseconds.

user: What was this trying to show?

assistant: Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast.

user: Why do computers have to be small to be fast?

assistant: nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum,

user: What was another anecdote about her?

assistant: While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging."

user: When did she literally debug something?

assistant: her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay.