Ada Lovelace Day
Today is the second Tuesday in October, Ada Lovelace Day – celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This year The Guardian has a more reasonable article than last year’s ‘nerd cafe’ reference.
The BBC chimes in.
Ada Lovelace is generally considered to be the first computer programmer, as she wrote ‘code’ for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. The Engine itself couldn’t be built at the time because it required precision in machining that wasn’t available. [IBM later built part of the Engine and it worked as Babbage claimed.]
The ADA programming language, created for the US Department of Defense, was named for Countess Lovelace.
Computers don’t care who writes the code, what they look like, or anything other than the code works. Unfortunately too many people can’t leave their personal hangups, biases, & prejudices behind, so days like this are necessary.
4 comments
The wonderful and hilarious cartoonist Kate Beaton has done a strip on Ada: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=298
There may be more.
The Guardian has a separate Ada section that contains all kinds of links to interesting things, like an Ada/Charlie ‘graphic novel’.
Oh, I love your housekeeping graphic. I have a wonderful woman who comes in once a week to keep the aisles clear between rooms.
I’ll need a small suitcase nuke to clear my garage. At least I can see the rug in the house….in most places. How did I amass so much stuff?!
Lynne has a minivan and carts off the stuff I don’t need or want to be sent to the Philippines or another of the missions supported by her friends. At one point she suggested that she could come by every other month and I told her that it would be a bad idea unless she owned a frontloader. I get something half done and then I have to go fix a toilet or light switch and the project stays in the middle of the kitchen table.