Admiral Grace Hopper: A Reminder of Why Diversity in Engineering is the Future

Admiral Grace Hopper, who invented the first universal programming language and the first language compiler, famously said that the most damaging phrase is “We’ve always done it this way.” These words represented who Grace Hopper was - a brilliant woman who wanted to create a different path for women. Her efforts truly changed the field of computer science and showed other women that engineering and science are not just subjects that men could be good at.

Grace studied mathematics and physics in college and joined the US Naval Reserve during World War II. She was assigned to a team working on the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (MARK I) - the first computer. Grace and colleagues, the first “coders,” programmed MARK I to make calculations vital for the war. After the war, Grace developed the first compiler to translate a programmer’s code into machine-readable instructions. She believed it would be easier to “talk” to a computer in English, so she proposed to write code in natural language. Many men thought Grace was out of her mind, as programming had always used complex codes, but she proved them wrong. She first invented FLOW-MATIC, a language that incorporated English, and then created COBOL, the first universal language that was hugely successful.

Grace’s contributions were important because they simplified computers and made them accessible to diverse people without advanced degrees. She was a reason why computers developed and grew into one of the ‘20 Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century’. Grace even proposed to use languages other than English in programming to increase diversity in the field. But why is Grace’s idea of diversity so important in engineering? Engineering design is about problem-solving. The technology engineers invent to solve problems changes our current lives but also focuses attention on how future problems should be solved. But what are these problems that must be solved? Which issues are more important? How should we solve them? And how should we allocate resources? People from different backgrounds will have different opinions. Many communities face problems which others take for granted. For example, clean water and malaria are serious problems, but not for the US or Europe. The world isn’t dominated by white males from a few countries, so why should engineering design only focus on their problems? Including women and non-white people will help to better represent the problems of many. Including people from diverse backgrounds will help design better solutions, as engineers often have to interact with people in other fields and the more knowledge a team has, the better the inventions will be.

I experienced how diversity in engineering led to better solutions in the Technovation competition where I was a participant. Technovation is a global, girls-only competition where teams code an App to solve a big community problem . Each team goes through an engineering design process, where they conduct research, brainstorm solutions, and choose the best one. They develop and test a prototype and then record a series of videos to market the App. The submission is judged by a panel of experts. I was one of only 4 finalists in my division, with over 5,500 girls from 61 countries participating. Technovation showed me how diversity is impactful. Thousands of girls from all around the world coded Apps to solve issues such as climate change, domestic violence, women's equality, poverty, and health. The Apps were impressive, using AI to identify the best treatments for ailments, incorporating scraping software to find calories in foods, and programming vibration detectors to help people with hearing loss evacuate buildings.

The competition also showed me how teams can perform feats that an individual cannot. Numerous research studies have shown that larger groups of people tend to make better, more efficient, and more profitable decisions. This is because group decision making incorporates the experiences and perspectives of more people, increasing creative opportunities. Larger groups can eliminate most irrational decisions of individuals. As more women and non-white people are involved in the engineering design process, we will have a better idea of the problems people around the world are experiencing. We will also have a larger team of more creative people with better solutions to eliminate these problems.