Grace Hopper was a US Navy rear admiral, mathematician, and the person who built the first compiler. In 1952, she wrote A-0 – a program that translated mathematical notation into machine code. Before the compiler, every program was written in machine language. Binary instructions. Ones and zeros. Different for every machine architecture. Hopper's idea: write code in something closer to English. Let a program translate it into machine language automatically. Her supervisors told her it was impossible. Computers, they said, could only do arithmetic – not symbol manipulation. She did it anyway. Her compiler worked. Nobody used it. "I had a running compiler," she later said, "and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic." She spent three years convincing people it was real before it was adopted. By 1959, she co-developed COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) which ran the financial systems of the Western world for decades. COBOL still processes an estimated $3 trillion in daily financial transactions. The code that keeps the global economy moving was designed by a woman whose supervisors told her it was impossible. She kept a clock on her wall that ran counter-clockwise. When asked why, she said: "Why not? Who says a clock has to run this way?"

Out here co-hosting the Londonmaxxing Hackathon with some of my favourite people! What better way to spend a Saturday than making your city better?

Good morning Developers 😀 enjoy the weekend!

Scientists have identified a reversal of the long-standing Flynn effect—the roughly 200-year trend of rising average intelligence (measured via IQ and cognitive tests) across generations. For the first time in modern recorded history, Generation Z (born roughly 1997–2012) shows lower performance than previous generations in key cognitive domains, including attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function, problem-solving, and general IQ—despite spending more years in formal education than ever before. Neuroscientist and educator Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, PhD, MEd, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on January 15, 2026, highlighting this shift. In his written testimony, he stated that cognitive development in children across much of the developed world has stalled or reversed over the past two decades, with declines evident in international assessments (e.g., PISA, TIMSS) and other large-scale data starting around the mid-2000s and accelerating post-2010. Horvath attributes the primary driver not to reduced schooling, but to the widespread integration of digital screens and educational technology (EdTech) in classrooms. He argues that human brains evolved for deep, focused learning through face-to-face interaction and sustained attention, not fragmented skimming or constant task-switching encouraged by devices. Key points from his testimony include: - Teens now spend over half their waking hours on screens, with significant portions in school involving computers or tablets—often leading to off-task behavior and shallower processing. - Evidence from meta-analyses and national/international studies shows a consistent pattern: higher classroom screen exposure correlates with weaker outcomes in reading, math, science, and higher-order reasoning. - Digital tools may aid narrow, repetitive skill practice in controlled settings, but in core academic contexts, they tend to reduce depth of understanding, retention, and critical thinking. Horvath describes this as a "structural mismatch" between human cognition and how digital platforms are designed (to capture and fragment attention), warning that unchecked EdTech adoption risks long-term harm to workforce skills, innovation, and societal reasoning. [Horvath, J. C. (2026). Written testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. U.S. Senate]

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