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Researchers Are Reconstructing Babbage's Analytical Engine (plan28.org)
Slashdot reader RockDoctor brings an update on a project to build Babbage's Analytical Engine:
Between 1822 and 1847, Charles Babbage worked on a number of designs for general-purpose programmable computing engines, some parts of which were built during his lifetime and after.
Since 2011 a group under the name of "Plan-28" have been working towards building a full version of the machine known as the Analytical Engine. (The group's name refers to the series of Babbage's plans which they are working to -- versions 1 to 27 obviously having problems.) This week, they've released some updates on progress on their blog. Significant progress includes working on the machine's "internal microcode" (in today's terminology; remember, this is a machine of brass cogs and punched cards!) [and] archive work to bring the Science Museum's material into a releasable form (the material is already scanned, but the metadata is causing eyestrain). "One of the difficulties in understanding the designs is the need to reverse engineer logical function from mechanical drawings of mechanisms -- this without textual explanation of purpose or intention..." Progress is slow, but real.
Last year marked the bicentennial of Ada Lovelace, who wrote programs for the Analytical Engine and it's predecessor, the Difference Engine, and whose position as "the world's first programmer" is celebrated in the name of the programming language Ada.
Last year marked the bicentennial of Ada Lovelace, who wrote programs for the Analytical Engine and it's predecessor, the Difference Engine, and whose position as "the world's first programmer" is celebrated in the name of the programming language Ada.
Per Wikipedia:
"Ada, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first computer programmer."
So a man discovers computers, a women figured out how to do a diddly on it, and we celebrate her as the first programmer without calling him the first programmable machine inventor.
Typical Feminism, and these days, Typical Slashdot.
Can we get past a week here without our allotted dosage of this bullshit for fucking once?
Meh. I mean, look. Sometimes you've got a gaggle of SJWs who are trying to label you sexist because their program doesn't work or keeps producing the wrong output or even worse: you've written some SJW bitches a program that works just fine, but they keep giving it bad input!
There's nothing that shuts them up faster than quoting relevant parts from Lovelace's notes. Stright from Note G*:
The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with.
BAM! Let the fucking SJWs suck on that! No, programming isn't harder for the cisgendered hunnies because they have vaginas, it's harder for them because everyone keeps telling them the only reason they aren't programmers is because evil assigned male lizard people like me who have woman suits trying to invade female restrooms to rape have somehow hidden away the secret of programming because for some damned reason I've yet to fathom, I don't think women should be programmers! For fuck's sake! News to fucking me! I don't think women should be programmers! I NEVER KNEW THAT BEFORE! THANKS FOR TELLING ME HOW I REALLY FEEL AND ALSO CALLING ME A LIAR!
* Sketch of the Analytical Engine