On this day in 1967 computer scientist and retired Navy Reservist Grace Murray Hopper was recalled to active duty by the US Navy. Hopper had been in the Naval Reserve and contributed to many technological developments, including the UNIVAC I computer, the A-0 compiler and the FLOW-MATIC data processing language before retiring in 1966. The following year however, the US Navy recalled her to active duty to help develop the programming language COBOL, which extended Hopper’s FLOW-MATIC language. COBOL went on to become the most ubiquitous computer programming language used in business.
In the years that followed her return to active duty Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy’s Office of Information Systems Planning, and by 1973 she was promoted to the rank of captain.
Nice write-up! I don’t want to get sentimental here but l learned Cobol in the 90’s and worked with it over 10 years and did some hard core stuff with it. I really loved it! Has some concepts that made programming just fun. The focus was really on solving the business problem rather than using the correct pattern, layer architecture or the latest and greatest version of Angular! God I miss those times!