First, let’s give a little background on who he was. Grace Hopper and its relevance to computer science. She was a mathematician and U.S. Navy officer who was instrumental in the development of early programming languages and compilers.
She is best known for her work in the development of Mark II system. In addition, it is a fundamental developer of theCOBOL programming language which is still used in many commercial and military environments.
Its importance and relevance are such that it is the name used by NVIDIA for one of its GPU architectures. More specifically, it is the name that the company has used as a codename for its GPUs for HPC and AI launched in 2022. This architecture is analogous to the Ada Lovelace architecture on which the RTX 40 Series GPUs are built.
Origin of the word bug for computer failures
We are going to travel back in time, more precisely in 1947 and more precisely at Harvard University. This famous and renowned institution had a colossal computer that occupied an entire room called the Mark II.
Suddenly and without warning, the Mark II began to give false results. Soon, the scientists in charge of the system began to investigate the reason for this failure. They did not know why this phenomenon was occurring. Among the scientists working with the Mark II and investigating the failure was Grace Hopper.
After a thorough investigation, it was possible to detect the origin of the issue: a moth. The butterfly had entered the computer and generated a short circuit in one of the relays. Due to this physical problem, the computer was giving erroneous results.
At that time, for these systems, there was a logbook in which errors were recorded. The story emphasizes that it was Hopper who took out the butterfly and put it in this logbook. As explained, with this butterfly, Hopper wrote the term “bug”, which means insect in English. It is possible that it was not Hopper herself who removed it, but rather another of the scientists present on site, but that is how it has always been told.
This is how the term “bug” was born in computing, from a moth that sneaked into a computer and caused a malfunction in the operation of the equipment. Currently, this term is used to designate any computer failure, whether it is the operation of a system or a code.
The word “bug” is used to emphasize the importance of being thorough when investigating a problem. In addition, it is also a symbol to remind that even a very small mistake can have big consequences.
The “Harvard moth” is an icon in computing history and has been the subject of many jokes over the years.
