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Ada Lovelace and Her Legacy
nightcats writes: Nature has an extensive piece on the legacy of the "enchantress of abstraction," the extraordinary Victorian-era computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron. Her monograph on the Babbage machine was described by Babbage himself as a creation of "that Enchantress who has thrown her magical spell around the most abstract of Sciences and has grasped it with a force that few masculine intellects (in our own country at least) could have exerted over it." Ada's remarkable merging of intellect and intuition — her capacity to analyze and capture the conceptual and functional foundations of the Babbage machine — is summarized with a historical context which reveals the precocious modernity of her scientific mind. "By 1841 Lovelace was developing a concept of 'Poetical Science', in which scientific logic would be driven by imagination, 'the Discovering faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of science.' She saw mathematics metaphysically, as 'the language of the unseen relations between things;' but added that to apply it, 'we must be able to fully appreciate, to feel, to seize, the unseen, the unconscious.' She also saw that Babbage's mathematics needed more imaginative presentation."
I love her legacy!
When Lord Byron was attending Trinity college at Cambridge, he kept a bear. He was hauled in to be told to get rid of the bear, because domestic animals were prohibited by college rules from college rooms. His response: the bear is not a domestic animal. He got to keep the bear!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
WHat legacy? Imaginary programmer for an imaginary computer? By those standards, I'm the first starship captain!
All they needed was steampunk Space Invaders.
Table-ized A.I.
Women were treated far better in Victorian times than they are now. There was no patriarchy holding her back like there is now.
However anyone (woman or man) is not going to like Ada Lovelace any more after reading this article. First off, ADA of today is barely based on what ADA wrote. Secondly the original ADA was never implemented on hardware during Lovelace's lifetime. Thus no programs were ever written, that were tested, and run for periods of time in repetition. Imagination in Science is very important, but only just up to the point, where imagination is considered to be science.
Honestly it seems like Ada had plenty of knowledge, and few outlets for her academic pursuits. In her lifetime society would have kept her from doing too much. (which is sad.)
"By 1841 Lovelace was developing a concept of 'Poetical Science', in which scientific logic would be driven by imagination, 'the Discovering faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of science.' She saw mathematics metaphysically, as 'the language of the unseen relations between things;' but added that to apply it, 'we must be able to fully appreciate, to feel, to seize, the unseen, the unconscious.'
Of course, that was when laudanum was commonly used.
She deserved better than to have Ada 83 named after her. Even Adolf 83 would have been a stretch for that language.
Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage: together, They Fight Crime (for certain definitions of "crime").
My friend and I invented mechanical computation, and all I got was this lousy language named after me.
Well, having that post modded insightful rather than "troll" is a new low for shashdot[*].
She was the first person to figure out that a number crunching computer could do more than just crunch numbers. This seems easy and obvious now, 70 years on from the Church-Turing thesis, and when such fundamental insights are baked into every electronic product around us. Such insights are much much harder to come by when you're the first person ever looking at something.
Imaginary programmer for an imaginary computer?
Well, if you've modded that insightful, then you've managed to dismiss a large amount of computer science as essentially worthless.
[*] Measurement of lows resets every midnight. Who am I kidding, the trolls come out of the woodwork on all the Ada related threads and attempt to play down her achievements.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Never ending quest for bandwidth has helped build the Internet.
Who would have predicted that a Slashdot story that mentions a woman from the 19th century would inevitably whining comments about feminism and dicksucking jokes?
You guys are just the best.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is one of their in-roads. Note all the five-dollar words and appeals to emotional wonderment.
Analytical Engines"
I quote verbatim:
"All but one of the programs cited in her notes had been prepared by Babbage from three to seven years earlier. The exception was prepared by Babbage for her, although she did detect a 'bug' in it. Not only is there no evidence that Ada ever prepared a program for the Analytical Engine, but her correspondence with Babbage shows that she did not have the knowledge to do so."
I get that some women feel bad for a lack of contibution to computing but bold faced fabrication is only going to earn you the emnity of intelligent people, presumably of which computing would have a number.
That I never see Ada Lovelace's name alone.... It is always that she is some guy's daughter.
Don't her achievements allow her to stand alone in history?
Does she always have to be tied to some dude to give her legitimacy?
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
So I'm just curious as to how successful her "imaginative" approach to mathematics has turned out. Did the mathematicians who tried her approach find greater success in uncovering mathematical truths, and thus turn the whole field that direction? Or has mathematics found more success by staying logical and analytical?
Or was this just her wild, touchy-feely approach to mathematics that nobody since then has found particularly fruitful? Just asking...
At first I though "WTF is Slashdot talking about a porn actress's legacy", then I realized: ADA Lovelace, not LINDA Lovelace.
*Totally* different legacy, although the quote still works:
"...that Enchantress who has thrown her magical spell around the most abstract of Sciences and has grasped it with a force that few masculine intellects (in our own country at least) could have exerted over it..."
-Styopa
Sometimes I have to shake my head when I realize that I am related to these two giants of human imagination and engineering. I guess that is where I got my creative and engineering aptitudes from!
Admittedly Ada Lovelace is a role model for anyone (especially women), but it was interesting to read the article and find that her mother, Lady Annabelle Byron, was gifted in geometry and know as the "Princess of Parallelograms." I think that's a message to everyone, especially mothers, as to just how strong a positive role model can influence a child. Maybe this is a realization that if we want more women in IT, it's women that have to step up and convince their daughters that mathematics aren't solely masculine.
because role models matter
That's a bit odd. I find that women with imagination and creativity tend to excel at sucking cock. And frankly, I guarantee she would be mighty fucking proud if she found out that there wasn't anybody in the entire world that could suck cock better than she. She might not admit it publicly, but you know she'd be thinking it deep down inside.
So get your fucking high horse off.
Lovelace is sometimes loosely described as the first computer programmer. She did produce an elegant set of tables showing how the engine could calculate Bernoulli numbers, but based on equations supplied by Babbage. Lovelace's originality lay in her conceptual definitions of the engine's mathematical functions, and her brilliant speculations on its design possibilities, going far beyond anything Babbage himself articulated. She wrote: “We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
Overall, the article is somewhat insulting, implying that "the only contribution a woman can make is to bring her imaginative, creative views to the table when she copies men. Put her in marketing." The article doesn't quite say that, but it is the natural conclusion from what the article says.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
First off, the language is called "Ada," and it has NOTHING do with what she wrote. The language was named in honor of her.
First post: Intentionally confusing her with porn actress.
Second post: Her dad was cool - here's some cool stuff about him!
Third post: Meh. She didn't really do anything noteworthy.
etc.
Fuck you guys. Stop living up to the worst stereotypes of geeks and nerds.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
If she had been alive today, can you just imagine what she could have accomplished?
Because that is the only conclusion one can come to regarding Ada Lovelace herself. She rode on Babbage's coat tails and he spoon-fed her everything.
This doesn't apply to all women, nor to even most female programmers. But in Lovelace's case it's the truth.
You fucking ID10T.
ADA is the American Dental Association not the Person or the Computer Language.
Nowadays you can find plenty of girls doing that sort of thing... without all of that hair "down there".... I just can't figure out why people just keep bringing her name up....
SJWs desperately need an accomplished female to flaunt about, so they elevate understanding a man's work and inducing him to compliment her to SCIENCE. Ada Lovelace was a nobody. If you pretend otherwise, you're an anti-male sexist.