A bit more than 50 years. Grace Hopper retired in 1966. It's true that Grace kept un-retiring, but the most crucial stuff is all before she retired. Invention of what we'd think of as a linker-loader (which Grace called a compiler) and of the broad concept of high level programming languages all happens in the 1950s.
We are all very lucky to have lived through the foundation of a new science and new engineering over the last 50 years.