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That's so funny... Mathematicians for 150 years: Ada Lovelace is kind of on top of it. Random from 2024: probably just a diversity footnote.

• mrguyorama 2y ago
  Seriously. As the article states, while everyone else was like "Wow cool we will make a machine that makes calculating things easier" Meanwhile Ada over here going "Oh shit this can do literally anything that can be done by steps of math. Someday machines following that formula will make music" Ada is not the first programmer. Ada is the first computer scientist. She understood the ramifications of what we would eventually call "turing complete" systems, and understood the value of "general purpose" in a general purpose computer, and seemingly understood that more than just numbers could be represented and calculated in a computer.
  • grey-area 2y ago
    Yes this is the most interesting thing about her writing - she foresaw a lot of later work.
• metalman 2y ago
  Funny indeed.Ada Lovelace has been persistantly recognised for a very long time, but has never been held up as a sufferget type mayrter, as by all accounts, she enjoyed herself out on the bleeding edge and is still making people uncomfortable 150 years after not fitting into any stereotypes then. Its clear from the footnotes that, whatever crowd around Babage and Lovelace, grasped the possibilities. Also interesting is that durring the apollo moon mission, the memory modules for the guidance computers were crafted by some of the last lace makers, working by hand, to survive the introduction of the jaquard looms and there punch cards.