A grand discovery

I love finding the origin of common sayings. Some are stupifyingly easy, such as spittin’ image (‘spirit and image’ through a hill country holler drawl) but others just never seem to come to you.

Today, I was whiling away my bus trip by reading a book on women scientists who contributed to the war effort – World War II, that would be. In reading the chapter on Grace Murray Hopper, the first real software engineer, who gave us COBOL I learned she may or may not have been the one to first use ‘bug’ as shorthand for a random glitch in a computer program. That was impressive enough but I’ve heard the moth-in-the-reed-switch story before so it was kind of old hat. 

But then, there it was, in an interview in which she’s explaining her method of overcoming managerial gridlock, “When you have a good idea and you’ve tried it and you know it’s going to work, go ahead and do it – because it is much easier to apologize later than it is to get permission.”  Which may or may not have actually been the origin of ‘easier to ask forgiveness than permission,’ but I’m going with it.

She appears to be the source of my project management mantra.

I love Grace Murray Hopper! Not in a weird way, of course, she’s been dead since the late 90s.