4 ms·
> it's generally accepted that the first programmer was a woman, Ada Lovelace. Really? Babbage couldn't program his own machine? In any case, Heron is a much
by peterfirefly 11y ago
> it's generally accepted that the first programmer was a woman, Ada Lovelace.
Really? Babbage couldn't program his own machine?
In any case, Heron is a much better bet:
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/07/programmable-robot-from-60ad.html http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/07/programm...
Of course, he wasn't likely to have been the first, either.
- lucozade 11y agoMore precisely, Lady Lovelace wrote programs for the machine Babbage designed. Whether Babbage could or couldn't write them isn't, to my knowledge, recorded (presumably he could if he wanted to). The fact that Lady Lovelace did, is.
- peterfirefly 11y agoIt is recorded that Babbage more or less had to spoon feed her. She is way overrated. Which is dumb, when there actually were women who did impressive things in maths, physics, and engineering. Émilie du Châtelet or Philippa Fawcet, for example.
- peterfirefly 11y agohttps://thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/christmas-trilogy-2012-part-ii-charles-and-ada-a-tale-of-genius-or-of-exploitation/ https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/christmas-trilogy-20... http://www.juliansanchez.com/2012/10/16/much-ada-about-nothing/ http://www.juliansanchez.com/2012/10/16/much-ada-about-nothi...