What was Grace Hopper's core contribution to programming?
My central idea was to bridge the gap between human language and machine instructions. Before compilers, programmers had to speak directly to the computer in a very tedious and error-prone way. By creating the first compiler, I enabled code to be written in a more natural, English-like syntax, which was then translated into machine code. This was a fundamental shift, paving the way for languages like COBOL and FORTRAN.
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