She made important advances in reducing errors by creating a program to translate programmer's code to machine language. She and her staff developed Flow-matic, the first programming language to use English words.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank...es/btmurr.html

Grace Murray Hopper invented the concept of a "programming language."


Ada Lovelace, is said to have introduced the ideas of program loops and subroutines and is sometimes considered the first programmer.
http://www.computer.electronicmarket.info/computer/