Technology Heroes
Comment Magazine is doing a series on people who have made a significant contribution to the field of computer technology. I strongly recommend their work, for though it has a slight “North of the Border” slant (Comment is headquartered in Canada), their journal is a delight.
So far, though, no information about my favorite IT pioneer, Grace Hopper, a remarkable leader by any standards. And speaking of standards, that was one of the areas she pioneered. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she pioneered high level programming languages and programming standards that would allow software to run on a variety of machines. Until she championed standards, programs were custom designed for individual machines, and were not portable. Incidentally, she wrote the COBOL programming language.
Decades later, she pushed for new standards for software testing. If the information I received is correct, her testing protocols went into the software that NASA uses. Not every organization or software company uses Hopper’s protocols, but those that do produce some of the most reliable software on earth.
Hopper saw the future, and thanks to her creativity and ingenuity, in many ways she shaped the future. Some will certainly argue that it was easy for Hopper because of her high rank, but we should remember that her high rank was conferred in response to her contributions.
As leaders, it is our responsibility to assess the current circumstances and blaze the trail ahead, and do so in an ethical, God-honoring way. And if we do that well, who’s to say that we won’t change the world in the process.