Betty Holberton was one of the original programmers of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, ENIAC.
During World War II, women were hired as “computers” by the Moore School of Engineering to perform calculations for ballistic trajectories electronically for the Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory. After being hired, Holberton was one of those selected to be programmers of ENIAC. She invented breakpoints in computer debugging during this period. Her accomplishments include writing the first generative programming system (SORT/MERGE), the first statistical analysis package, which was used for the 1950 US Census, and helping to develop UNIVAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. She also worked with John Mauchly to develop the C-10 instruction set for BINAC, considered to be the origins of modern programming languages, and participated in the development of early standards for the COBOL and FORTRAN programming languages with Grace Hopper.