A woman invented the first and the most widely used computer languages; was Re: [Edu-sig] Question ?

[Michael McLay]

On Sunday 18 April 2004 11:54 pm, Tim Peters wrote:
> [Laura Creighton]
>
> > ...
> > Not enough women in the field means not enough women computer
> > language designers.  In fact, I am the only one I know,
> > ...
>
> Barbara Liskov (MIT) was the chief designer of CLU
>
>     http://www.pmg.lcs.mit.edu/CLU.html

Thanks for the reference. Everything old is new again.

> and of the later Argus.  Both were pioneering languages in their time (CLU
> for data abstraction, Argus for distributed computing), and beautifully
> designed.

Let's not overlook Admiral Hopper. She created the compiler, which implies the 
first computer processed language. Her work on FLOW-MATIC at Sperry became 
the basis of the COBOL language:

   By 1949 programs contained mnemonics that were transformed into binary code
   instructions executable by the computer. Admiral Hopper and her team
   extended this improvement on binary code with the development of her first
   compiler, the A-O. The A-O series of compilers translated symbolic
   mathematical code into machine code, and allowed the specification of call
   numbers assigned to the collected programming routines stored on magnetic
   tape. [...] she published her first compiler paper in 1952.[...] She
   participated in a public demonstration by Sperry Corporation and RCA of
   COBOL compilers and the machine independence they provided. [...] With her
   technical skills, she lead her team to develop useful COBOL manuals and
   tools. With her speaking skills, she convinced managers that they should
   learn to use them.

		- http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html

And COBOL is very much with us to this day. The majority of all business data 
is still processed by COBOL. There are between 180 billion and 200 billion 
lines of COBOL code in use worldwide.

		- http://www.cobolwebler.com/cobolfacts.htm