Software weenies may think only of the first compiled language, but the comparison between Lamarr and Hopper has naught to do with COBOL, this is a *hardware* issue!

Ms. Hopper is rightly glorified not merely for debugging an early computer, but documenting it, by extracting the offending moth from the jaws of the failed relay and taping it into the machine's log book. This is real hands-on, down-in-the-trenches stuff. Lamarr's ...spread... may be a powerful ...tool... but she never implemented it.

Harrumph.

I was always rather impressed by COBOL - did what it said on the box/can.

Although a sort of RISC language, insofar as it had a very limited instruction set, you could do some neat stuff re data handling using redefines in the data division, iirc. Lots of ways to structure stuff too - I liked it:)

God bless Ol' Ironsides is what I say.

Without Our Lady of the Compiler, we'd still be reading tabloids instead of monitors. And we all know that reading is fundamental.


"That's HEDLEY!"