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Grace Hopper
17 quotes
“From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the removal of a 2-inch-long moth from the Harvard Mark II experimental computer at Harvard in 1947, as quoted in Time 16 April 1984. Note that the term "bug" was in use by people in several technical disciplines lon…
“At present, we're putting on paper a lot of stuff that never needed to be on paper. We do need to keep the records. But there isn't any reason for printing them. The next generation growing up with the computers will change that.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in the U.S. Navy's Chips Ahoy magazine (July 1986)
“I handed my passport to the immigration officer, and he looked at it and looked at me and said, "What are you?”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On being the oldest active-duty officer in the U.S. military, in an interview on 60 Minutes (24 August 1986)
“In total desperation, I called over to the engineering building, and I said, "Please cut off a nanosecond and send it over to me.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On demonstrating a billionth of a second of electricity travel with a piece of wire, in an interview on 60 Minutes (24 August 1986)
“At the end of about a week, I called back and said, "I need something to compare this to. Could I please have a microsecond?”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On demonstrating a millionth of a second of electricity travel with a piece of wire, in an interview on 60 Minutes (24 August 1986)
“There's something you learn in your first boot-camp, or training camp: If they put you down somewhere with nothing to do, go to sleep — you don't know when you'll get any more.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Grace Hopper on Late Night with David Letterman (2 October 1986)
“I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. ... they carefully told me, computers could only do arithmetic; they could not do programs.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Grace Hopper : Navy Admiral and Computer Pioneer (1989) by Charlene W. Billings, p. 74
“I've always been more interested in the future than in the past.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Reader's Digest (October 1994), p. 185
“I've received many honors and I'm grateful for them; but I've already received the highest award I'll ever receive, and that has been the privilege and honor of serving very proudly in the United States Navy.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As appeared in the October 1986 issue of Chips, a Department of the Navy information technology magazine
“[The Computer] was the first machine man built that assisted the power of his brain instead of the strength of his arm.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As spoken at Space Coast 1987 speaking about the Harvard Mark I computer. The Computer was originally She in reference to the Mark I.
“They're going right to building them bigger and bigger and faster and faster. They'd do much better to build a system of computers and have them operate in parallel. We'd get much more done, faster. (…) My analogy is that back in the early days of this country, when they moved heavy objects around, they didn't have any Caterpillar tractors and they didn't have any big cranes. They used oxen. And when they got a great, big log on the ground and one ox couldn't move it, they didn't try to grow a bigger ox. They used two oxen.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's just like planning a dinner. You have to plan ahead and schedule everything so it's ready when you need it. Programming requires patience and the ability to handle detail. Women are 'naturals' at computer programming.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, "We've always done it this way." I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We've tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must include in any language with which we hope to describe complex data-processing situations the capability for describing data. We must also include a mechanism for determining the priorities to be applied to the data. These priorities are not fixed and are indicated in many cases by the data. Thus we must have a language and a structure that will take care of the data descriptions and priorities, as well as the operations we wish to perform. If we think seriously about these problems, we find that we cannot work with procedures alone, since they are sequential. We need to define the problem instead of the procedures. The Language Structures Group of the Codasyl Committee has been studying the structure of languages that can be used to describe data-processing problems. The Group started out by trying to design a language for stating procedures, but soon discovered that what was really required was a description of the data and a statement of the relationships between the data sets. The Group has since begun writing an algebra of processes, the background for a theory of data processing. Clearly, we must break away from the sequential and not limit the computers. We must state definitions and provide for priorities and descriptions of data. We must state relationships, not procedures.”
Grace Hopper (1906–1992) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Management and the Computer of the Future (1962) by Sloan School of Management, p. 273