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Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.'

Grace Hopper, OCLC Newsletter

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The story behind the card

Grace Hopper was a US Navy rear admiral and computer pioneer. She wrote one of the first programs that translated English-like instructions into machine code and helped shape COBOL, one of the first widely used programming languages. The OCLC Newsletter printed this line in its March/April 1987 issue, in a feature on her wit and wisdom, and she went on to say that she tried to fight the habit, which was why the clock on her wall ran anticlockwise. The sharper version that circulates under her name, 'The most dangerous phrase in the language is...', has an older root: in 1976 Computerworld reported her saying the most dangerous phrase a data-processing manager can use is 'We've always done it that way.'

Türkçe oku
İnsanların değişime alerjisi var. “Biz bunu hep böyle yaptık” demeye bayılırlar.
Grace Hopper, OCLC Newsletter

Grace Hopper, ABD Donanması'nda tuğamiralliğe kadar yükselmiş bir bilgisayar öncüsüydü. İngilizceye benzeyen komutları makine diline çeviren ilk programlardan birini yazdı ve ilk yaygın programlama dillerinden COBOL'un ortaya çıkmasında büyük pay sahibi oldu. Bu söz, OCLC Newsletter'ın Mart-Nisan 1987 sayısında onun nükteli sözlerini derleyen bir yazıda yayımlandı. Hopper hemen ardından bu alışkanlıkla mücadele ettiğini, duvarındaki saatin de bu yüzden ters yöne döndüğünü söylüyordu. Onun adıyla dolaşan daha sert cümlenin (“Dildeki en tehlikeli ifade...”) kökü daha eskidir: 1976'da Computerworld, Hopper'ın bir bilgi işlem yöneticisinin kullanabileceği en tehlikeli sözün “Biz bunu hep böyle yaptık” olduğunu söylediğini yazmıştı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Grace Hopper
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In Toyota's car factories, any worker who spots a fault can pull a cord to call for help and, if it cannot be fixed quickly, stop the whole production line.

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