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Jean Sammet, Co-Designer of a Pioneering Computer Language, Dies at 89

June 4, 2017December 22, 2022 Senior Editoracademic discipline, accounting, addresses, admiration, advocate, ambition, aptitude, Base, basic data, Ben Shneiderman, Book, Brian Kernighan, bridge players, business data, Business Oriented Language, Calif, cardboard, Cards, changes, chess players, chief scientist, COBOL, COBOL code, college, Common, communication, computers, Computing Machinery, consistent voice, contemporary, creation, customers, Dag Spicer, decades, defense, developer, early versions, Edsger Dijkstra, enduring legacy, engineering discipline, excellent mathematics department, female president, Field, Freedom, Fundamentals, general guidelines, Generation, government agencies, Grace Hopper, grade, Grady Booch, hardware, health care, History Museum, IBM Research, immediate survivors, industries, industry, infancy, initial aversion, Interview, Jean E. Sammet, Jean Sammet, largest purchaser, late 1950s, lawyers, Lois Haibt, longevity, makers, manufacturing operations, maryland, math purists, maximum, Mind, mother, Mount Holyoke, Mountain View, Ms. Hopper, Ms. Sammet, names, nearly round-the-clock work, new language, new programming language, New York City, obscene piece, Parents, Pentagon, people, phone numbers, post, powerful tools, Princeton University, problem-solving skills, Problems, professional association, programmers, programming career, programming languages, prominent computer scientist, prominent women, purchasing, retailing, rigid career paths, role, Ruth Sammet, science, scientific calculations, senior curator, settled culture, Sherry-Netherland Hotel, short-term solution, so-called spaghetti code, Social Security numbers, software engineering, Sperry Gyroscope, Sperry Rand, sprawling programs, stints, structure, successor Sperry Rand, Sylvania Electric, Techniques, Technology, time, United States Department, utter astonishment, wider audience

“I thought of a computer as some obscene piece of hardware that I wanted nothing to do with,” Ms. Sammet recalled in an interview in 2000. Continue reading the main story Her initial aversion was not unusual among the math purists of the time, long before computer science emerged as an academic discipline. Later, Ms. Sammet tried programming calculations onto cardboard punched cards, which were then fed into a computer. “To my utter astonishment,” she said, “I loved it.” In the early 1950s, the computer industry was in its infancy,…