Awesome lady.

When I was in high school, I had the great privilege of attending a lecture by Grace Hopper in Fulton, Missouri, at Westminster College. This would have been about 1986. She gave every one of us a nanosecond and gave a captivating talk.

I remember clearly one of her stories about going to the Pentagon to "The Room" to ask for funding for one of the early computer projects she was working on. She had never been to "The Room" before and she was very scared because she was asking for, I think, about $500,000. She steeled herself, gave the presentation, and looked at all the generals sitting in "The Room". They were silent for a bit. Finally, one spoke up to say, "Granted." As she was leaving, another General pulled her aside to explain to her that they were all somewhat dumbfounded by her amazing presentation and obvious passion for her work, and oh by the way, no one had ever asked them for less than $5,000,000 prior to that point.

Grace Hopper is also the actual person who found the first computer software "bug". A moth had gotten inside Eniac and was electrocuted in the machine, shorting out some of the circuits involved in the programming.

She's my hero of the week.

>> ^ugh:

Grace Hopper is also the actual person who found the first computer software "bug". A moth had gotten inside Eniac and was electrocuted in the machine, shorting out some of the circuits involved in the programming.

http://features.techworld.com/applications/3301346/moth-in-the-machine-debugging-the-origins-of-bug/

In the other talk, she spoke about making developers aware of wasted microseconds. Part of me wants to hate her for that, but she's just too damn awesome.

Ah, thank you xxovercastx for the correction. This was 25 years ago and my memory is not perfect by any means. I do remember she did talk about the bug. Sorry to mislead anyone - not my intent.
>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^ugh:
Grace Hopper is also the actual person who found the first computer software "bug". A moth had gotten inside Eniac and was electrocuted in the machine, shorting out some of the circuits involved in the programming.
http://features.techworld.com/applications
/3301346/moth-in-the-machine-debugging-the-origins-of-bug/