Comment by Markoff
5 days ago
for people outside US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
Grace Brewster Hopper (née Murray; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral.[1] She was a pioneer of computer programming. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the FLOW-MATIC programming language, which was a major influence on COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today. She was also one of the first programmers on the Harvard Mark I computer. She is credited with writing the first computer manual, "A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator", and is often credited with creating the first compiler.
didn't find anything controversial about her in wikipedia
She was the real deal, just massively overhyped for being a woman.
Here is an earlier programming language (never implemented) that was machine independent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl
I believe they posted "often credited with creating the first compiler", which is still true in this case. Interesting choice of a counter-example for a few reasons, though.
The conference was something else. It was a mix of recruiting, networking, and speakers. It had become really expensive and had some problems in recent years.
I think she’s also well known outside the US, at least if you studied cs