I was recently in a discussion with someone who told me that, despite being credited with inventing the precursor to computer software, Grace Hopper's actual invention, the A-0 compiler was more a primitive linkage editor, and that her contributions to the field of computing were negligible. Is this true?
While more can always be said, /u/jschooltiger has an answer that covers Hopper here.
I will add that:
Complaining that the A-0 to A-2 series are somehow not “really” compilers is a little like complaining early film wasn’t “really” film because it didn’t have sound. The very conceptual idea of code intended to transform from one form to another was novel enough, and Hopper had to spend two years pitching the idea before it even picked up. As she later said, “I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic.”