History of Computer Programmers

            Since I found no one else particularly interesting at all within computer science, I decided why not do this blog on Ada Lovelace? I’m not going to lie, I found it interesting that a woman was the first computer programmer, which I guess made it more interesting to write about.

            She was born in 1815 somewhere in England to Lord Byron and Lady Byron. Her mother was a mathematician and wanted her daughter to study mathematics as well. Her genius could first be examined by the fact she created designs for flying machines when she was only fourteen years old. I don’t know about you, but when I was fourteen I could barely decide what to wear, let alone create a design for anything. Sometime when she was seventeen in 1833, she met Charles Babbage. The two, being genius mathematician awesome people, talked about math stuff regarding everything mathematical. I found the fact that she could do this at the age of seventeen very impressive.

            She married William King in 1835, who was ten years older than her, becoming the Countess of Lovelace (just throwing that in there, I found it made her sound really cool. “Countess of Lovelace” has a nice ring, don’t you think?). She had three children whom were never actually named in the article.

            Sometime in 1834 Charles Babbage had decided to create the Analytical Engine, which was a calculating machine that was never finished during his lifetime. This is important because Ada wrote notes on the machine she literally called Notes. These notes are the very reason she is famous (as if being a genius mathematician wasn’t enough). Within the notes it talks about how she understood Babbage’s Analytical Engine and how great at math she was.

            She died at the age of 37 in 1852 due to cancer. Sadly she was buried by her dad that she never knew (her parents had some serious issues. It was sort of like an old soap opera, but with less fainting.).

            If she were still kicking, I’d ask her two questions. My first would be, “Why didn’t you complete your plans with the flying machine?” I feel as though such an invention could’ve revolutionized the world much earlier, but probably would’ve been quite impossible to build, now that I think about it…Any who, my second question would be “Has anyone inspired you to be the person you are?” Since she had so many contributions to the Analytical Engine and is considered the world’s first computer programmer, I wonder if anyone special in her life pushed her to make her the person she was.

That’s all for now.

https://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html <---The source of my info