Grace

Grace: what a beautiful name!

Grace: what a fitting name too!

Regarding grace, the feeling, it is a personal experience. The most fitting “definition” is the one given by Bifo Berardi, which goes along the lines of being “in tune with reality.” I quoted definition in the last sentence because, even if this is a faithful definition of such feeling, it is felt, or, rather, embodied, quite differently from each one of us: the feeling, and thus its meaning, is subjective.

It so happens that, when I write code in a certain language, I feel this grace, specially when it compiles correctly, first-time, with no seeming bugs (a term I would love to believe Grace coined) whatsoever. But I do not feel this grace in other high-level languages. And as I enjoy some languages, and some I do not, others enjoy them like I do, and others do not, or maybe some are more ambivalent. This is to say: the experience of writing in a certain high-level programming language is intrinsically attached to the experience of grace (unless you are a masochist), and, hence, is a subjective condition. The compiler, whose mother is Grace Hopper, enabled this.

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is keystone to second-wave feminism. Akin to Grace Hopper, Simone, the philosopher who would rather describe herself as an author, did not identify with feminism (at least not until much later on in late life.) This is understandable, given that there was no such concrete idea of what feminism was or could be. There was just experience, and the important first step of equality under the law. It happens to be that both women of importance were white. They did not get to have a tranquil life because, according to our still-patriarchal world, they belonged to the other sex. However, clearly, they did not suffer from the injustices of being both the other sex, gender, and “race.” Their privilege was enough to get them to prominences; a joy that so many women, even white women, frustratingly cannot still enjoy without an inner conflict, or a surrender of sorts.

I am not belittling their achievements, though; I am just trying to understand why they did not identify with such movement of our times. Even Grace Hopper, in a ten-second interview clip displayed on the short video documentary The Queen of Code, openly kind of admits this by stating the following: “I did not experience that [the experience of being completely disregarded for belonging to the other sex and other otherness] because I was in the navy.” They could not identify completely because feminism was still not a concrete or mainstream philosophy yet, and, given their human and historical condition, they could not experience the worst of discriminations. Still, what I would like to try to achieve here is that, without regard of their beliefs or what they could conceive of them, it doesn’t matter, for what they have proved is that very first step: that it is possible, and that discrimination is utter bullshit.

More than a man, as an aspiring software engineer, who very well knows (or would like to believe knows) the positive need to work with women and non-binary folk, and also the need to change the way things are for what they ought to be, I am ashamed of not having known more about Grace Hopper before. As my Gender Equality professor taught us, it is easier to conceive a successful gay man than a successful woman. She is right in this case; it is easier to know more about Alan Turing than Grace Hopper. Certainly, both achievers should be praised in, at least, equal higher footing. Who knows who we have not cherished yet?

The lack of acknowledgement regarding Grace Hopper from our field is a clear reflection that things are still wrong. That’s what an education does: it rids out of stupidity; now I know. Now I know better.

I would love to believe that, either Grace and/or Simone, knew at least something of each other. In The Second Sex’s last chapter titled “Towards liberation,” Simone describes the need for women involved in the artistic craft of writing to have and live the enough freedom to explore the and for the world, just like men have done, to expand the horizons of what is possible. Grace certainly accomplished this; having written the first compiler, and having participated in writing Cobol, a language still fresh in use and interest from new faces, expanded what was possible to do with computers. She liberated software from being just for big chunky and fast calculator uses to be better understood as symbol handlers now. One can only guess what other achievement is yet to come, and, as a man, I cannot imagine what new idea or invention a woman or non-binary folk can bring to further emancipation. [Women] poets shall be!

All in all, thanks, Grace Hopper.

Forever programming with Grace.

Beauvoir, S. (1949). El Segundo Sexo. (Sixth edition). Ediciones Cátedra: Madrid, España.

Company Name. (2015, February 02). The Queen of Code [video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/118556349

Historian. (2018, December 06). Grace Hopper – The Mother of Cobol (Page 1 of 2). i-programmer.info. Retrieved from https://www.i-programmer.info/history/people/294-the-mother-of-cobol.html

Historian. (2018, December 06). Grace Hopper – The Mother of Cobol (Page 2 of 2). i-programmer.info. Retrieved from https://www.i-programmer.info/history/people/294-the-mother-of-cobol.html?start=1