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Babbage may have written programs for his Analytical Engine while he was building it.. so that makes him the first computer engineer, but I think the term "prog

Babbage may have written programs for his Analytical Engine while he was building it.. so that makes him the first computer engineer, but I think the term "programmer" implies that someone specializes in writing "client" instructions for machines - thus, it is still valid to say that Lovelace was the first programmer.

TeMPOraL 14y ago
I think that would be bending the meaning of 'programmer' to support a particular argument. He wrote programs for the machine, he is a programmer, as simple as that.
chipsy 14y ago
Like with most things scientific, when one gets down to the fine details, it's hard to make any solid conclusion of who was "first." It's most likely that Lovelace and Babbage had already had conversations about computing before the machine was fully concieved, and so while their individual insights may have been different, they ultimately come from a collaborative perspective.
jgrahamc 14y ago
That seems like a nonsensical argument. Babbage's preserved notebooks which Plan 28 is studying clearly show Babbage designing the machine and instruction set (both of which changed over time) with specific programs in mind. There are even programs on punched card that he prepared. He clearly was programming. Also, given that there was never an Analytical Engine built no one was a programmer in the sense of being a third-party who merely prepares programs for the machine rather than being involved in its design. The only way Lovelace could have prepared programs was if she was intimate with the design of the machine. The design of machines and their programming going hand in hand was extremely common in the early days of computing. Just read about the IAS machine that von Neumann worked on, or Turing's design of the ACE. This was natural because they would have programs in mind when designing the instruction set (see, for example, the fact that the Pilot ACE had floating point because the designers knew what they were going to use it for).

TeMPOraL 14y ago

I think that would be bending the meaning of 'programmer' to support a particular argument. He wrote programs for the machine, he is a programmer, as simple as that.

chipsy 14y ago

Like with most things scientific, when one gets down to the fine details, it's hard to make any solid conclusion of who was "first." It's most likely that Lovelace and Babbage had already had conversations about computing before the machine was fully concieved, and so while their individual insights may have been different, they ultimately come from a collaborative perspective.

jgrahamc 14y ago

That seems like a nonsensical argument. Babbage's preserved notebooks which Plan 28 is studying clearly show Babbage designing the machine and instruction set (both of which changed over time) with specific programs in mind. There are even programs on punched card that he prepared. He clearly was programming. Also, given that there was never an Analytical Engine built no one was a programmer in the sense of being a third-party who merely prepares programs for the machine rather than being involved in its design. The only way Lovelace could have prepared programs was if she was intimate with the design of the machine. The design of machines and their programming going hand in hand was extremely common in the early days of computing. Just read about the IAS machine that von Neumann worked on, or Turing's design of the ACE. This was natural because they would have programs in mind when designing the instruction set (see, for example, the fact that the Pilot ACE had floating point because the designers knew what they were going to use it for).