The Curious Mind of Ada Lovelace 110
An anonymous reader writes "Going beyond the usual soundbites about Ada Lovelace, Amy Jollymore explores the life of the worlds first programmer: 'When I heard that Ada Lovelace Day was coming, I questioned myself, "What do I actually know about Ada Lovelace?" The sum total of my knowledge: Ada was the first woman programmer and the Department of Defense honored her contributions to computation in 1979 by naming its common programming language Ada.
A few Ada biographies later, I know Augusta Ada Lovelace to be an incredibly complex woman with a painful life story, one in which math, shame, and illness were continuously resurfacing themes. Despite all, Ada tirelessly pursued her passion for mathematics, making her contributions to computing undeniable and her genius all the more clear. Her accomplishments continue to serve as an inspiration to women throughout the world.'"
A few Ada biographies later, I know Augusta Ada Lovelace to be an incredibly complex woman with a painful life story, one in which math, shame, and illness were continuously resurfacing themes. Despite all, Ada tirelessly pursued her passion for mathematics, making her contributions to computing undeniable and her genius all the more clear. Her accomplishments continue to serve as an inspiration to women throughout the world.'"
Just women? What? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Her accomplishments continue to serve as an inspiration to women throughout the world."
Not to women, but to people of both sorts throughout the world.
Who wrote this tripe? Oh, right, an AC.
Inspiration just to women??? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is incredible sexist. Mathematicians (and Computer Scientists) honor their great ones equally, gender does not play a role. A bit of digging finds a few female mathematicians that are in all respects treated as Mathematicians and honored for their discoveries, not for being (or not being) women.
Maybe one reason why the gender-nonsense falls so obviously short here is that there is absolutely no gender component to the discoveries of these great people.
Re:She wasn't just the first woman programmer (Score:4, Insightful)
The first computers were humans. There was no first programmer.
In terms of being a pioneer of formalizing and proving a nontrivial algorithm from axioms, Euclid can't get enough credit for his work like computing greatest common divisor. He was like the Knuth of the ancient world.
Re:Just women? What? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're missing my point.
I dont have to be gay to be inspired by Alan Turing. And I dont have to be female to be inspired by Ada Lovelace either.
Re:Inspiration just to women??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Charles Babbage was the first programmer. (Score:1, Insightful)
Are you proposing that the creator of the difference engine, Charles Babbage, could not program and did not know how to program his own invention?
Ada did not contribute anything, Charles exchanged letters with her, was most likely in love with her secretely, and as any man in love, gave her too much credit and projected the attributes he admires upon her, even though she had none.
Re:Not the first programmer. (Score:5, Insightful)
My understanding was that Babbage's own programs were more akin to today's Hello World in complexity, just as a proof of concept to show that his machine would work in the first place. Ada's program on the other hand was a complete implementation of an algorithm to compute a mathematical sequence (Bernoulli numbers) based on a mathematical formula provided by Babbage. So whether Babbage or Ada was the first programmer would depend on whether you consider Hello World to be a proper program or not.
Re:Inspiration just to women??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you feeling bad because your gender was ignored? That's ... adorable.