Re: Re: Article on women and mathematics
On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 21:01 +0100, Hanna M. Wallach wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Byron
> >
> > is something you probably forgot to mention about early programmers ;)
>
> I was somewhat surprised by that article. (I'll admit that I've never
> read anything about Ada Lovelace until now, so perhaps if I knew more
> about her I wouldn't've been so surprised.) Previously, I had been
> under the impression that Ada Lovelace had, herself, been a
> programmer; the article, however, claims that, "The evidence and
> correspondence between Lovelace and Babbage indicate that he wrote all
> of the programs in the notes appended to the Menebrea translation."
> Furthermore, the article says, "Biographers have noted that Lovelace
> struggled with mathematics, and there is some debate as to whether
> Lovelace understood deeply the concepts behind programming Babbage's
> engine, or was more of a figurehead used by Babbage for public
> relations purposes."
mm. I think this is probably a good example of wikipedia sucking. If you
follow the links at the bottom, you'll find that this is basically the
opinion of one biographer (Holt). One this does seem certian though, is
that whether she wrote the algorithms in the notes or not, she almost
certainly wasn't the 1st programmer, Babbage was, but she was the 1st to
articulate clearly of the need for separation of program from machine,
and hence could quite possibly be rightly called the 1st computer
scientist :)
Rob
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