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Grace Hopper on nanoseconds

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Re: Grace Hopper on nanoseconds

#21

Post by 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!

Re: Grace Hopper on nanoseconds

#22

Post by yew »

DanBC wrote: post #12
tripzilch wrote: post #9

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, exce…

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).

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.)

Re: Grace Hopper on nanoseconds

#23

Post by 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.

Re: Grace Hopper on nanoseconds

#25

Post by jes5199 »

jcr wrote: post #5

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

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

Re: Grace Hopper on nanoseconds

#26

Post by 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)

Re: Grace Hopper on nanoseconds

#27

Post by authorityaction »

jes5199 wrote: post #25
jcr wrote: post #5

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

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

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

Re: Grace Hopper on nanoseconds

#28

Post by DanBC »

DanBC wrote: post #12
tripzilch wrote: post #9

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, exce…

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).

For people using A4 paper: The long side of A4 is 297 mm. So one billion bits of A4 (plus another one billion bits of 2.792458 mm) are how far light travels in one second.

Re: Grace Hopper on nanoseconds

#29

Post by [deleted] »

gnosis wrote: post #26

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)

[deleted]

Re: Grace Hopper on nanoseconds

#30

Post by enneff »

phaus wrote: post #21

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 Gra…

> 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?

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