Grace Hopper Documentary Edges on Successful Crowdfunding 65
mikejuk (1801200) writes "Born With Curiosity is a proposed biopic about computer pioneer Grace Hopper. With a week to go before it closes on June 7, a crowdfunding campaign on Indigogo has so far raised 94% of its $45,000 target. Although there have been a couple of books devoted to Grace Hopper and she recently was the subject of a Google Doodle, her story hasn't made it to celluloid, which is something that Melissa Pierce finds anomalous, stating on the Born With Curiosity Indigogo page: 'Steve Jobs had 8 films made about him, with another in pre-production! Without Grace Hopper, Steve might have been a door to door calculator salesman! Even with that fact,there isn't one documentary about Grace and her legacy. It's time to change that.'"
Ob (Score:1)
psot division
01 pic x(5) ws-long-name-ordinal value "FRIST"
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He probably thinks we only have computers because of NASA.
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I can sense your pride.
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This story was mildly interesting to me, because my COBOL teacher met Rear Admiral Hopper in person.
Did you know she coined the term "debug", because that was how she fixed an errant program? Found the relay that wasn't connecting, and removed a moth? Taped it into the log book with "Debugged the computer".
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-vcErOPofQ
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Grace Hopper Lionfunding campaign
FTFY
jesus, I knew someone would play the gender card (Score:5, Insightful)
" her story hasn't made it to celluloid, which is something that Melissa Pierce finds anomalous, stating on the Born With Curiosity Indigogo page: 'Steve Jobs had 8 films made about him, with another in pre-production! Without Grace Hopper, Steve might have been a door to door calculator salesman! Most of history has been written by and about men. Our aim is to bring to life the untold and lost stories of women."
Uh, her story has been told in the media, quite a bit. She was, for example, featured by 60 minutes. She's mentioned in nearly every CS textbook; I've seen her name pop up in movies and anime. Damn near any techie worth their salt has heard of Hopper. Any CS grad certainly has. She has a ship named after her; she was exempted from retirement guidelines, constantly promoted, to become one of the oldest and longest serving officers. She spent something like a decade, hired by DEC, to go around and lecture. She's in Arlington National Cemetery.
Comparing her to Jobs's pop culture fame is idiotic. On one hand, the head of a major consumer electronics company who was a consummate showman and redefined PERSONAL computing, versus someone who worked on mainframes during+after WW2 on languages most of the population has never heard of, and died more than two decades ago, well before personal computers could be found in most homes? When she passed in 1992, I was one of a handful of kids in my town who had a personal computer in the house, and I lived in a pretty well-off suburb of a tech corridor.
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Everyone and everything in computing is compared to St Jobs without whom nothing would ever have been invented. In fact, didn't you know that Steve invented Flowmatic and Cobol and Fortran and, well, you name it...
Re:jesus, I knew someone would play the gender car (Score:4, Funny)
Most of history has been written by and about men.
Which is why Alan Kay had thirteen movies made about him! Oh, wait...
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Didn't you know... women cannot communicate with the world on equal terms. Everything has to be couched in victimhood and oppression.
In other words Grace Hopper suddenly becomes part of the battle against male oppression... even though her story is actually proof that capable women had success and achievement without a lot of feminist whining and tantrum throwing.
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That's the thing though isn't it. I respect the shit out of Grace Hopper, just like I respect any man or woman that just says, hey, I'm going to do this - then buckles down and gets it done. They earn that respect instead of expecting it on account of genitalia or highly suspect historical-cultural narratives. This is unfortunately the exact opposite of the kind of woman that feminism's eternal victimhood and collectivised pressure creates.
As a kid I loved Aliens and have watched it many times since, but wo
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Discrimination (Score:2)
So because one woman was able to rise to the top of her field, it instantly makes it impossible for any other women to be denied their due?
The problem is that just because there doesn't happen to be equality of outcome, doesn't mean that there is not equality of opportunity. And the constant whining and victimization just gives everyone a bad taste which can become self-fulfilling (in the negative sense).
I will use my wife as a good example, When we began our carreers, she made more than me for essentially equivalent jobs (engineering). She then proceeded to make a number of promotional moves and was just short of some significant management
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Re:jesus, I knew someone would play the gender car (Score:4, Interesting)
Steve did not redefine personal computing, just a designer who sponged off other's engineering accomplishments. He invented nothing, conceived nothing other than perhaps artistic case and keyboard designs.
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How do you view his activities from the late 1970s, when Apple was first started?
Re:jesus, I knew someone would play the gender car (Score:4, Informative)
Sponging off his engineering friend, and avoiding paying for or acknowledging his daughter. In short, perfecting his Human Turd technique
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Detachable Keyboard
Software based interrupts
Kernel mode
Mouse
The Command Line
Using a language to program a computer with
Hint - Not Steve Jobs. Apple, like Microsoft, invented very little. What they did was take the inventions of others, and package them in different ways. The Apple ][ was an S-100 bus computer with a cheaper processor (A Motorola 6809 if I remember properly) that ran
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Steve did not redefine personal computing, just a designer who sponged off other's engineering accomplishments. He invented nothing, conceived nothing other than perhaps artistic case and keyboard designs.
By that standard the Wright brothers were not inventors either, because all they did was sponge of real inventors, and bolt a lightweight combustion engine to some pieces of wood and cloth. By any sensible definition, Apple invented the tablet. Yes, there had been attempts at tablets before the iPad, but they were just as effective as airplanes before the Wright brothers. You're still allowed to hate Apple and Jobs all you want, but fair is fair: they did invent the tablet.
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For sufficiently loose definitions of "working tablet", you are of course right. Like those Microsoft thingies that everyone stayed away from in droves. Or Apple's own Newton.
So why was the iPad the first massively popular one? Because Apple produced one that was actually useful rather than started people cursing in the first few minutes. That took them years of experimentation and polishing; there is a reason there had been rumours about an Apple tablet for years before it was actually introduced.
It's easy
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By that standard the Wright brothers were not inventors either, because all they did was sponge of real inventors, and bolt a lightweight combustion engine to some pieces of wood and cloth. By any sensible definition, Apple invented the tablet.
No, by your standard the Wright Brothers didn't invent the aeroplane, because theirs was useless and it was, in fact, invented several years later. The first person to do something gets hailed as the inventor. Others may perfect it but you don't get to claim they are
Invention vs. innovation (Score:2)
I think the word that this conversation is looking for is "innovation" rather than "invention". Innovation does not require one to be the first to do something, just the first to do it right, or to make a significant improvement.
Apple's contribution (lately) is mostly innovation. Although the original iPhone was enough of a break away from existing phone/PDA combo devices that it could come close to invention.
(and if you believe Woz, the early Apple would count as invention as well, on several counts. But
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Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, PhD. [ http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html ] is an iconic figure in the history of computing and computer science. How anyone could not be aware of her achievements baffles me. Yep, comparing Grace Hopper to Steve Jobs is tantamount to heresy for anyone earning a degree in mathematics, computer science, or engineering.
That's funny, because... (Score:1)
...*I* knew someone would play the "I knew someone would play the gender card" card.
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She's mentioned in nearly every CS textbook...
Yes, but that's often where many aspiring software engineers first learn of her, or Ada Lovelace. Ask how many aeronautical engineers first heard of the Wright Brothers from a college textbook on aeronautical engineering.
Was a programming language inevitable? (Score:1)
It seems to be quite a stretch to claim that if Hopper had not invented the first programming language nobody else would have.
Indiegogo Campaign Link (Score:1)
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Show the real truth (Score:3)
I hope they are careful to show her life story as it was, warts and all, instead of Hollywood-izing it into some overdramatized biopic of a saint.
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Starring Angelina Jolie!
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112% 100% ?? (Score:2)
Edges on successful? It is currently at 112%...
Pop culture exposure (Score:2)
Here's Rear Admiral Grace Hopper on Letterman - probably in '82 or '83 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
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It's been about 30 yrs since I heard about her probably around the time of that video although I've never seen it before.
She's definitely a pioneer and very accomplished but the woman gave us COBOL for fuck's sake!!
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Yeah, how awful that the first-ever high level language isn't as good as the ones that came after! Booooo!!!
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Fortran & Lisp are both slightly older than COBOL; arguably Algol as well. :-D
COBOL as implemented is probably better than Plankalkul.
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I can't believe there is so much love for the person who invented COBOL.
The transition to a first generation computerized accounting system is much easier if your accountants can read and audit the code.
Needed, but... (Score:2)
Jobs is not a good comparison (Score:2)
Steve Jobs' gifts were mostly in the areas of industrial design and marketing. He was not really all that much of a techie.
A much better comparison would be with Steve Wozniak. He's an actual techie who designed important things. How many moves have been made of that guy (not counting supporting parts in those 8 Steve Jobs movies)? Or perhaps Jay Miner [wikipedia.org], who was central to the design of both the old Atari video game system (the machine that popularized home gaming), their 8-bit computer line, and the Amiga.
Oh, the Mondays! (Score:1)
Calculator Salesman (Score:2)
Hmmm.... Without Grace Hopper would there even have been a calculator as we know it? Perhaps Steve would have been a sliderule salesman, instead?
About Grace Hopper Documentary Edges (Score:1)