
Grace Hopper on nanoseconds - tosbourn
http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/3/1/grace-hopper-to-programmers-mind-your-nanoseconds.html
======
jcr
If you're unfamiliar with Grace Hopper, her wikipedia article is a great read.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper>

The fact that she wrote the first compiler is extremely impressive, but she
also found the first bug... -- a moth.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:H96566k.jpg>

~~~
jes5199
apparently the word "bug" was already in common usage at the time, though.

~~~
authorityaction
I think she's the one that started 'debugging' when they removed the moth.

------
lloeki
It reminded me of the 500-mile email story:
<http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html>

------
mhurron
Grace Hopper on Letterman

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0g5_NgRao>

~~~
efa
Love it! Watching the video on You Tube I noticed other videos on the side
including Lady Gaga on Letterman. Couldn't help but think Grace Hopper is the
kind of person who should be famous and a role model. Instead its people like
Lady Gaga.

------
tripzilch
That first paragraph was as good as unreadable thanks to all the miles,
gallons and Fahrenheits.

11.8 inch ... times about 2.5 is umm wait it's a link, maybe if I hover it, no
they didn't put metric in the title tags either.

"In one millisecond, light travels 186 miles", which is about the same
distance as a million squirrels put head-to-toe. Why not measure in squirrels?
It makes about the same amount of sense, except that "one million" is a nice
round number, unlike "186".

~~~
DanBC
It's disappointing that they didn't also include metric; or do metric first
with Imperial for the US and Burmese audience.

The distance travelled by light in 1 ns, = 299.792458 mm (11.803~ in).

~~~
yew
I suspect they used US customary units because that's what's used in the
video.

Anyway, if we're only going to talk about readability then I'll note that the
text is imminently comprehensible to anyone with an intuitive grasp of said
units. So the real question is one of functionality. (I'll put my vote in for
metric, of course.)

------
aw3c2
Direct link: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8>

------
johansch
After reading a bit more on Grace Hopper, particularly about the first ever
(?) compiler "A-0" she made, I found this in-depth article describing it (and
a bit more):

<http://www.cbi.umn.edu/iterations/norberg.html>

------
phaus
So far you guys have overlooked what was possibly her greatest contribution to
humanity.

She was credited with coining the phrase "It is better to ask for forgiveness
than to ask for permission."

In all seriousness, she was an amazing person. Whenever I hear someone start
complaining that women shouldn't be allowed to pursue a career, I think of all
of the things that we wouldn't have if it weren't for women like Grace Hopper.

Edit: Someone posted the quote before I finished writing. Good job!

~~~
enneff
> Whenever I hear someone start complaining that women shouldn't be allowed to
> pursue a career...

Woah, where do you hear that?! Aren't we in 2012?

~~~
phaus
"The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and
convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness,"

-Rick Santorum

------
shabble
I can't view the video, so I'm not sure if it's straight up transcription
error, or just confusion, but:

the length of wire that is as long as light can travel in one nanosecond. The
length is a very portable 11.8 inches. _A microseconds worth of wire is a
still portable, but a much bulkier 984 feet._

<snip>

Understanding the profligate ways of programmers, she suggests that every
programmer wear a necklace of a _microseconds_ worth of wire

(Emph mine) I can see ~12" as a perfectly reasonable necklace length, but ~100
yards? Seems like a bit of a pain in the neck.

[Edit:] After a bit of playing around with Wolfram Alpha, it seems that a
microsecond of AWG#40 copper would weigh only ~14 grams. But at 0.08mm, or
around half the thickness of a hair, it's going to be a bit fragile.

Using a more reasonable #28 (0.3mm) wire comes in at 220g, which is definitely
on the high side for a necklace.

And woe betide anyone using gold!

~~~
moreati
> but ~100 yards? Seems like a bit of a pain in the neck.

That's the point - to serve as a constant reminder of how much
circuit/processor time is thrown away for every microsecond it sits just
waiting

~~~
shabble
There's a certain parallel to draw with the Iron Ring/Engineer's Ring[1,3].

Quoting from the latter article:

 _The Iron Ring is worn on the little finger ("pinky") of the working
(dominant) hand; this would be the left hand for a left-handed person.[2]
There, the facets act as a sharp reminder of one's obligation while the
engineer works, because it could drag on the writing surface while the
engineer is drawing or writing. This is particularly true of recently
obligated engineers, whose rings bear sharp, unworn, facets_

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring>

[2] NMF

[3] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring>

------
yskchu
Nice share, thanks. Always easier to understand something with visualization.

------
gnosis
Then there's the attosecond[1], during which time light can only travel the
length of three hydrogen atoms, and is the shortest measured period of time.

These[2] other time intervals are also interesting.

[1] - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attosecond>

[2] - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(time)>

------
wiredfool
I got one of her nanoseconds at a talk when I was in HS. It lived on my
bulletin board for a good long time.

Not mentioned in the article, but in her talk (at the time anyway) was that a
picosecond is about the size of a pepper flake. She had a packet of those, but
they're less durable to give out.

------
Jun8
On a tangential note, here's something useful for back of the envelope
calculations: a billion seconds is \pi centuries.

~~~
jgw
No, 1 billion seconds would be (around) π _decades_...

~~~
Jun8
Oops, you're right, I got the \pi in the wrong side of the equation!

Evidently this is called Duff's Rule
([http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/07/01/three-rules-of-
thum...](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/07/01/three-rules-of-thumb/)).

