First, she was incredibly interested in flying and after watching birds, she created a guide called Flyology with her own illustrations 2. Later in life, she became interested in the opposite dispositions of her parents and wrote about the imagination and its relationship with pragmatism 2.
But, her most influential writing in , when she attended a party for socialites and met her next tutor 2. The two became fast friends and Babbage, known as the father of computers, showed Lovelace his plans for an analytical engine which was designed to calculate more complex equations than his first computational machine 2. He asked Lovelace to write about his work for a scholarly journal. She immediately agreed. In her article, Lovelace proposed a vision for his machine that went beyond calculations.
In the years that followed, Ada, Babbage, and a military engineer named. Luigi Menabrea, collaborated closely to improve working theory on the machine. In , Ada was able to publish her own paper on the Engine, detailing how the machine could be programmed with code to calculate complex formulas. The first algorithm ever carried out by a machine, and computer programming, were born.
Babbage thought his machine was limited to numerical calculations. Ada saw much more. She saw a future in which a multi-purpose modern computer could manipulate any piece of content that could be translated into digital form — music, sound, text and pictures. In other words, computers could paint pictures, compose melodies, manipulate sound and communicate. Technology caught up to this vision only a century later.
Sadly, Lovelace's article attracted little attention when she was alive, but she would continue to correspond with Babbage right up until her death. Despite all her hard work, Babbage's Analytical Engine was never realized. Her work would lay dormant for around one hundred years, until its significance was once again realized during the age of computers.
Lovelace suffered from a bout of cholera in , after which her health declined. On November 27th, she lost her battle with uterine cancer and died at the far too young age of Her body was interred in the graveyard of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Nottingham, England. A tragic end to an amazing lady. As Lao Tzu once said, " The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. The world had lost a true visionary in Ada and an extraordinary woman who was dubbed the " Enchantress of Numbers " by her good friend Charles Babbage.
Ada preferred to refer to herself as an analyst and metaphysician. Today, she is remembered as one of the first people to realize the potential of computers and computing. This language has one primary purpose: all its code is designed to be used in development of video games. That was a lot of names, but one thing that is strikingly obvious is that while there are definitely plenty of fathers of programming to list, the number of mothers is not that impressive.
Of all the most famous computer pioneers, which include Babbage, Zuse, Turing, Jobs yes — Steve Jobs is one of the most popular computing-related personalities ever! Why is that so? Could it be possibly explained by the alleged inability of women to work in the field effectively? Or did they have fewer opportunities to implement their ideas? Or is it just not the way women choose for themselves? Take a look at the timeline above: some of the actual pioneers were females!
Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper made contributions to the science of computing which are no less important than those of male scientists who worked later. Still, for some reason, their role in the history of programming is not as widely discussed as that of men. The list of female programmers is not limited to the two persons mentioned above. This is not to say that there should be some gender-based confrontation. The message here is that being a programmer means having a particular mindset and talents as a mathematician.
But the truth is that women also played a very significant role in the technologies we enjoy today. In fact, the mothers of programming created as many as nine languages. The underrepresentation of women in programming is not the only issue that is observed in the field. It is interestingly interwoven with another one. The question of who the first programmer was has no clear answer : in most sources, it is Ada Lovelace who is regarded as the first person to have written a program.
However, it is simply not logical: her notes definitely were of great significance, but one should remember that it was Charles Babbage who designed the famous Analytical Engine, and it was L. Manabrea who wrote that very memoir on the invention that Ada translated and supplemented with notes. That is why all the three deserve the title of the first programmer. Gender stereotypes remain an issue for many people. While there is no doubt that men are behind the majority of inventions, women also play a significant role in science, and it is a matter of time until all biases, be they gender, race or nation, are eliminated from research.
Rationalization of the gender gap in the tech field is something that does not seem to cease to spark heated debates. Of course, it goes without saying that it is the skills and hard work that matter, not what gender or skin color it is. And it should be remembered by both men and women that it is what you do that defines what you have. Just as men cannot humiliate women in the workplace because they are women, women themselves should understand that the very fact of being a female does not make you superior.
If people want equality, let it be for everyone: learn, improve, and contribute, and the field of programming will probably get even better. Founding Fathers and Mothers of Programming. Programming: Origins The beginning of the programming era spans a period of over two centuries. Image: history-computer. Leave a Reply.
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