17 ms·

Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace

157 points by lispython 11y ago

j2kun 11y ago
I like history and particularly the history of computing, but given how little respect Wolfram had with regards to the history of mathematical ideas that preceded his own work (and then claiming credit for those ideas), how can I trust any historical analysis he authors?
- dang 11y ago
  Every Wolframy thread turns into the same discussion about Wolfram himself. Let's not let that happen here. It's enough that the article is Wolfram's attempt to decide for himself what the story is. Idiosyncrancies aside, he obviously has the mathematical and computational background to understand the material. The main obstacle is putting in the time to understand it, which he did. The article is replete with historical information, he explains why he concludes what he does, and the result is an order of magnitude more substantive (and technical) than any other Lovelace/Babbage article I recall seeing on HN. I think it can stand on its own. The content is fascinating and is what deserves discussion.
  - p4wnc6 11y ago
    I disagree strongly with this. Wolfram himself litters the entire essay with asides in which he compares and contrasts his own place within science history with both Babbage and Lovelace. If Wolfram wanted to write a neutral historical account, he could have, but instead he opened the door for the continued derision of NKS-style pomposity by specifically tailoring this historical account as if it too must serve to underscore his own career efforts, which he chooses to frame as longsuffering attempts to have his work be granted the correct degree of awe. Until he begins writing things in which he doesn't infuse that sort of ploy to underscore so-called credit he perceives he should be given, I think it's not only fair but highly useful to the community at large for criticisms of any work he produces to center on these aspects. The only counter-argument I could see would be if the historical content of the article were so story-breaking and important that we should all put up with the pomposity in order to consume the never-before-explained-as-well historical side, but w.r.t. the history of Ada Lovelace and Babbage, that's just not true, and there are many other historical accounts that don't try to coyly shoehorn in comparisons to Wolfram products, Wolfram computational achievements, or credit/recognition that Wolfram believes he deserves.
    - dang 11y ago
      Yes, I know about Wolfram's asides, tics, and shoehorning, as does everyone who reads a thing he wrote. But the Wolfram Derangement Syndrome it provokes in internet forum threads isn't interesting either. It's a mirror image of the thing it is annoyed by. We're not going to ban what Wolfram writes because (a) he's a good writer, (b) however one evaluates him, Mathematica is significant, and (c) his best pieces—which this is one of—are interesting. That's enough to belong here, and I think we can expect HN to have the discipline to focus on the substantive bits and resist the hypnotic pull of the trollish ones.
      - p4wnc6 11y ago
        Who is talking about banning what he writes?
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - Create 11y ago
        Mathematica is significant Mathematica is a proprietary software influenced by the earlier computer algebra systems Macsyma (of which Wolfram was a user) and Schoonschip (whose code Wolfram studied). Maxima is a computer algebra system based on a 1982 version of Macsyma. It is written in Common Lisp and runs on all POSIX platforms such as OS X, Unix, BSD, and Linux as well as under Microsoft Windows and Android. It is free software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It would be the same to defend William Henry "Bill" Gates III, by stating that MS-DOS is significant, while MS-DOS was a renamed form of 86-DOS - owned by Seattle Computer Products, written by Tim Paterson. Development of 86-DOS took only six weeks, as it was basically a clone of Digital Research's CP/M (for 8080/Z80 processors), ported to run on 8086 processor.
        coldtea 11y ago
        >Mathematica is a proprietary software Nothing wrong with that. >influenced by the earlier computer algebra systems Macsyma (of which Wolfram was a user) and Schoonschip (whose code Wolfram studied). Not much wrong with that either. Even if it was just a clone of those systems when it came out, being the successful clone is enough to make it have merit. But of course since then it's 1000 times the code size of the initial systems, and 100 times the capabilities. >It would be the same to defend William Henry "Bill" Gates III, by stating that MS-DOS is significant, while MS-DOS was a renamed form of 86-DOS Again, MS-DOS is significant. Whether it was innovative (it wasn't) is another thing, but it sure has been historically significant. Sorry, but it's not always the first product that comes out that defines an era and a market. And copying happens all the time too, and can even evolve into something that the original never was.
  - breatheoften 11y ago
    I found the historical storytelling to be the most fascinating part of the article as well -- however I think the article does also lend potentially interesting fodder for discussion of wolfram himself. One can clearly see why wolfram would be interested in the ideas of Lovelace and Babbage -- but I wonder what kind of introspection he experiences as he reflects on his perception of their Victorian personalities. People who talk explicitly about nobility and "bequeathing" ideas to future generations, while also being actual visionaries as regarded by these future generations. There's Babbage who believes himself to be under appreciated by his contemporaries -- a character flaw which frequently causes him to fail to act in ways which would've been more effective at recruiting support from others and might've resulted in a deeper execution of his vision. And Lovelace who seems very able to see herself as an abstract object of public perception, due to the controversy and celebrity of her father -- and who devotes herself completely to authoring a version of her story that is unassailable by controversy -- an actor who explicitly asks that her contributions be portrayed only for the merit of the advancements they contain -- and no more. One wonders which personality wolfram self identifies with more ...
- ForHackernews 11y ago
  Obligatory: "A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity" http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/491/Batshit.htm http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/491/Batshit.htm
tudorw 11y ago
Is it okay to mention https://ideas.lego.com/projects/102740 https://ideas.lego.com/projects/102740 ?
- JorgeGT 11y ago
  Oh, I was expecting a full LEGO Technic replica of the Engine :(
  - yourapostasy 11y ago
    Will a Lego reproduction [1] of Difference Engine No. 2 computing 2nd order differences to 3 digits (the reproduction in the UK [2] evaluates 7th order polynomials to 31 digits, true to Babbage's design) suffice? [1] http://acarol.woz.org/LegoDifferenceEngine.html http://acarol.woz.org/LegoDifferenceEngine.html [2] http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/modernsequel/ http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/modernsequel/
    - JorgeGT 11y ago
      Only if I can buy/steal it! But seriously, I went to see the reproduction at the Science Museum in London and it's an amazing piece of machinery. They have also plenty of other mechanical computation devices (for integration, derivation, approximating polynomials, Fourier transforms, etc.), worth paying a visit.
- AReallyGoodName 11y ago
  The certificate for that site has expired (assuming it's yours).
  - tudorw 11y ago
    not awesome! will tell them :)
joeyrideout 11y ago
I absolutely love the parallels between this story of Ada and Babbage and modern startup dynamics. Early on, "Babbage was slightly distracted in 1824 by the prospect of joining a life insurance startup". Later, Ada "proposed to take on the role of CEO, with Babbage becoming CTO", where the CTO in this case had a personality that "pushed others away" and the CEO was a "Steve-Jobs-like figure who would lead the vision of the Analytical Engine". My favourite excerpt from this piece, though, hits home for us programmers who prefer to automate annoying tasks. I found it hilarious, and will probably use this quote in my next commit message: Babbage is said to have exclaimed, “I wish to God these tables had been made by steam!”—and began his lifelong effort to mechanize the production of tables.
ericjang 11y ago
I thought this was a wonderfully written account of Ada and Babbage's role in modern computing. It was delightful to see how someone from Victorian society would express the frustration of debugging: I am in much dismay at having got into so amazing a quagmire & botheration with these Numbers, that I cannot possibly get the thing done today. …. I am now going out on horseback. Tant mieux Stephen Wolfram does add a few self-congratulatory remarks, but by and large it didn't really bother me for this article. Perhaps this is all part of some grand scheme to inflate his own work, but I learned a lot of history reading the article that I might not otherwise have by researching it myself. I think this piece was well-written enough to be taken at face value.
- FD3SA 11y ago
  >Stephen Wolfram does add a few self-congratulatory remarks. This is the man to a T. I think he would have done well in Victorian England. He is a clinical narcissist, and is incapable of mentioning any topic, subject, or fact without inserting a remark about his achievements. It gets comical once you get to know him. I'd start pointing things out to him if I ever spoke to him. "Stephen, this steak is delicious. Didn't you invent the software that allowed the design of the temperature sensors on modern grills?"
- lucozade 11y ago
  I think I'll have a New Year's resolution to write quagmire in bug reports where I would have written spaghetti. Might be harder to get the impact assessment to choose from: crash, error, incorrect function, botheration. But I'll give it a go.
JorgeGT 11y ago
But back in 1826 Babbage had invented something he called Mechanical Notation—that was intended to provide a symbolic representation for the operation of machinery. [...] Undoubtedly people didn’t understand it. So, Babbage invented VHDL?
unlimitedbacon 11y ago
There is an excellent webcomic called The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, that describes what would have happened if they had successfully completed the Analytical Engine and gone on to fight crime. http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/ http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/ More impressive than the comic itself is the amount of research put into it and the footnotes that go along with it. The author often takes inspiration directly from primary sources. For instance, a whole series on Babbage's strange hatred of street musicians.
- jordigh 11y ago
  I am a very happy owner of a print copy of the comic, and I recommend it at every opportunity possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thrilling_Adventures_of_Lovelace_and_Babbage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thrilling_Adventures_of_Lo... It is an amazing work of art and scholarship. It's so much fun. It is indeed thrilling to imagine Ada as an accomplished horsewoman and lady of adventure, wrangling engines both within and without. In one of the stories, she's something of a parkour artist running through the gears of the difference engine. And it's all full of footnotes to primary sources that explain more about her actual life. I find it more fun to read than Wolfram's blog post. Certainly more fun than, "in apparent resonance with some of my own work 150 years later, he talks about the relationship between mechanical processes, natural laws and free will."
leriksen 11y ago
It might be the lack of coffee and food, (I read this before breakfast), but the mental image of a flower describing how it got watered kept popping into my head - the flower can't decide whats more impressive, the watering can containing the water, or the water itself. And in the middle of telling the story, every now and then, the flower says "But look how pretty I am !!"
no1ne 11y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K5p_tBcrd0&feature=youtu.be&t=2190 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K5p_tBcrd0&feature=youtu.be...
Houshalter 11y ago
This is really well written and researched. I can't imagine reading so many century old letters and papers. The most interesting part of this was getting a glimpse of a totally different society. Little details, like all these notable people that knew each other. And how many of them published in widely different fields. Or their totally different style of speech. Or how Babbage had 8 children, and all but 3 died.

157 points by lispython 11y ago

j2kun 11y ago

I like history and particularly the history of computing, but given how little respect Wolfram had with regards to the history of mathematical ideas that preceded his own work (and then claiming credit for those ideas), how can I trust any historical analysis he authors?

dang 11y ago
Every Wolframy thread turns into the same discussion about Wolfram himself. Let's not let that happen here. It's enough that the article is Wolfram's attempt to decide for himself what the story is. Idiosyncrancies aside, he obviously has the mathematical and computational background to understand the material. The main obstacle is putting in the time to understand it, which he did. The article is replete with historical information, he explains why he concludes what he does, and the result is an order of magnitude more substantive (and technical) than any other Lovelace/Babbage article I recall seeing on HN. I think it can stand on its own. The content is fascinating and is what deserves discussion.
- p4wnc6 11y ago
  I disagree strongly with this. Wolfram himself litters the entire essay with asides in which he compares and contrasts his own place within science history with both Babbage and Lovelace. If Wolfram wanted to write a neutral historical account, he could have, but instead he opened the door for the continued derision of NKS-style pomposity by specifically tailoring this historical account as if it too must serve to underscore his own career efforts, which he chooses to frame as longsuffering attempts to have his work be granted the correct degree of awe. Until he begins writing things in which he doesn't infuse that sort of ploy to underscore so-called credit he perceives he should be given, I think it's not only fair but highly useful to the community at large for criticisms of any work he produces to center on these aspects. The only counter-argument I could see would be if the historical content of the article were so story-breaking and important that we should all put up with the pomposity in order to consume the never-before-explained-as-well historical side, but w.r.t. the history of Ada Lovelace and Babbage, that's just not true, and there are many other historical accounts that don't try to coyly shoehorn in comparisons to Wolfram products, Wolfram computational achievements, or credit/recognition that Wolfram believes he deserves.
  - dang 11y ago
    Yes, I know about Wolfram's asides, tics, and shoehorning, as does everyone who reads a thing he wrote. But the Wolfram Derangement Syndrome it provokes in internet forum threads isn't interesting either. It's a mirror image of the thing it is annoyed by. We're not going to ban what Wolfram writes because (a) he's a good writer, (b) however one evaluates him, Mathematica is significant, and (c) his best pieces—which this is one of—are interesting. That's enough to belong here, and I think we can expect HN to have the discipline to focus on the substantive bits and resist the hypnotic pull of the trollish ones.
    - p4wnc6 11y ago
      Who is talking about banning what he writes?
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - Create 11y ago
      Mathematica is significant Mathematica is a proprietary software influenced by the earlier computer algebra systems Macsyma (of which Wolfram was a user) and Schoonschip (whose code Wolfram studied). Maxima is a computer algebra system based on a 1982 version of Macsyma. It is written in Common Lisp and runs on all POSIX platforms such as OS X, Unix, BSD, and Linux as well as under Microsoft Windows and Android. It is free software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It would be the same to defend William Henry "Bill" Gates III, by stating that MS-DOS is significant, while MS-DOS was a renamed form of 86-DOS - owned by Seattle Computer Products, written by Tim Paterson. Development of 86-DOS took only six weeks, as it was basically a clone of Digital Research's CP/M (for 8080/Z80 processors), ported to run on 8086 processor.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        >Mathematica is a proprietary software Nothing wrong with that. >influenced by the earlier computer algebra systems Macsyma (of which Wolfram was a user) and Schoonschip (whose code Wolfram studied). Not much wrong with that either. Even if it was just a clone of those systems when it came out, being the successful clone is enough to make it have merit. But of course since then it's 1000 times the code size of the initial systems, and 100 times the capabilities. >It would be the same to defend William Henry "Bill" Gates III, by stating that MS-DOS is significant, while MS-DOS was a renamed form of 86-DOS Again, MS-DOS is significant. Whether it was innovative (it wasn't) is another thing, but it sure has been historically significant. Sorry, but it's not always the first product that comes out that defines an era and a market. And copying happens all the time too, and can even evolve into something that the original never was.
- breatheoften 11y ago
  I found the historical storytelling to be the most fascinating part of the article as well -- however I think the article does also lend potentially interesting fodder for discussion of wolfram himself. One can clearly see why wolfram would be interested in the ideas of Lovelace and Babbage -- but I wonder what kind of introspection he experiences as he reflects on his perception of their Victorian personalities. People who talk explicitly about nobility and "bequeathing" ideas to future generations, while also being actual visionaries as regarded by these future generations. There's Babbage who believes himself to be under appreciated by his contemporaries -- a character flaw which frequently causes him to fail to act in ways which would've been more effective at recruiting support from others and might've resulted in a deeper execution of his vision. And Lovelace who seems very able to see herself as an abstract object of public perception, due to the controversy and celebrity of her father -- and who devotes herself completely to authoring a version of her story that is unassailable by controversy -- an actor who explicitly asks that her contributions be portrayed only for the merit of the advancements they contain -- and no more. One wonders which personality wolfram self identifies with more ...
ForHackernews 11y ago
Obligatory: "A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity" http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/491/Batshit.htm http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/491/Batshit.htm

tudorw 11y ago

Is it okay to mention https://ideas.lego.com/projects/102740 https://ideas.lego.com/projects/102740 ?

JorgeGT 11y ago
Oh, I was expecting a full LEGO Technic replica of the Engine :(
- yourapostasy 11y ago
  Will a Lego reproduction [1] of Difference Engine No. 2 computing 2nd order differences to 3 digits (the reproduction in the UK [2] evaluates 7th order polynomials to 31 digits, true to Babbage's design) suffice? [1] http://acarol.woz.org/LegoDifferenceEngine.html http://acarol.woz.org/LegoDifferenceEngine.html [2] http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/modernsequel/ http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/modernsequel/
  - JorgeGT 11y ago
    Only if I can buy/steal it! But seriously, I went to see the reproduction at the Science Museum in London and it's an amazing piece of machinery. They have also plenty of other mechanical computation devices (for integration, derivation, approximating polynomials, Fourier transforms, etc.), worth paying a visit.
AReallyGoodName 11y ago
The certificate for that site has expired (assuming it's yours).
- tudorw 11y ago
  not awesome! will tell them :)

joeyrideout 11y ago

I absolutely love the parallels between this story of Ada and Babbage and modern startup dynamics. Early on, "Babbage was slightly distracted in 1824 by the prospect of joining a life insurance startup". Later, Ada "proposed to take on the role of CEO, with Babbage becoming CTO", where the CTO in this case had a personality that "pushed others away" and the CEO was a "Steve-Jobs-like figure who would lead the vision of the Analytical Engine". My favourite excerpt from this piece, though, hits home for us programmers who prefer to automate annoying tasks. I found it hilarious, and will probably use this quote in my next commit message: Babbage is said to have exclaimed, “I wish to God these tables had been made by steam!”—and began his lifelong effort to mechanize the production of tables.

ericjang 11y ago

I thought this was a wonderfully written account of Ada and Babbage's role in modern computing. It was delightful to see how someone from Victorian society would express the frustration of debugging: I am in much dismay at having got into so amazing a quagmire & botheration with these Numbers, that I cannot possibly get the thing done today. …. I am now going out on horseback. Tant mieux Stephen Wolfram does add a few self-congratulatory remarks, but by and large it didn't really bother me for this article. Perhaps this is all part of some grand scheme to inflate his own work, but I learned a lot of history reading the article that I might not otherwise have by researching it myself. I think this piece was well-written enough to be taken at face value.

FD3SA 11y ago
>Stephen Wolfram does add a few self-congratulatory remarks. This is the man to a T. I think he would have done well in Victorian England. He is a clinical narcissist, and is incapable of mentioning any topic, subject, or fact without inserting a remark about his achievements. It gets comical once you get to know him. I'd start pointing things out to him if I ever spoke to him. "Stephen, this steak is delicious. Didn't you invent the software that allowed the design of the temperature sensors on modern grills?"
lucozade 11y ago
I think I'll have a New Year's resolution to write quagmire in bug reports where I would have written spaghetti. Might be harder to get the impact assessment to choose from: crash, error, incorrect function, botheration. But I'll give it a go.

JorgeGT 11y ago

But back in 1826 Babbage had invented something he called Mechanical Notation—that was intended to provide a symbolic representation for the operation of machinery. [...] Undoubtedly people didn’t understand it. So, Babbage invented VHDL?

unlimitedbacon 11y ago

There is an excellent webcomic called The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, that describes what would have happened if they had successfully completed the Analytical Engine and gone on to fight crime. http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/ http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/ More impressive than the comic itself is the amount of research put into it and the footnotes that go along with it. The author often takes inspiration directly from primary sources. For instance, a whole series on Babbage's strange hatred of street musicians.

jordigh 11y ago
I am a very happy owner of a print copy of the comic, and I recommend it at every opportunity possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thrilling_Adventures_of_Lovelace_and_Babbage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thrilling_Adventures_of_Lo... It is an amazing work of art and scholarship. It's so much fun. It is indeed thrilling to imagine Ada as an accomplished horsewoman and lady of adventure, wrangling engines both within and without. In one of the stories, she's something of a parkour artist running through the gears of the difference engine. And it's all full of footnotes to primary sources that explain more about her actual life. I find it more fun to read than Wolfram's blog post. Certainly more fun than, "in apparent resonance with some of my own work 150 years later, he talks about the relationship between mechanical processes, natural laws and free will."

leriksen 11y ago

It might be the lack of coffee and food, (I read this before breakfast), but the mental image of a flower describing how it got watered kept popping into my head - the flower can't decide whats more impressive, the watering can containing the water, or the water itself. And in the middle of telling the story, every now and then, the flower says "But look how pretty I am !!"

no1ne 11y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K5p_tBcrd0&feature=youtu.be&t=2190 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K5p_tBcrd0&feature=youtu.be...

Houshalter 11y ago

This is really well written and researched. I can't imagine reading so many century old letters and papers. The most interesting part of this was getting a glimpse of a totally different society. Little details, like all these notable people that knew each other. And how many of them published in widely different fields. Or their totally different style of speech. Or how Babbage had 8 children, and all but 3 died.