back to article Google honors computing's first developer Ada Lovelace

Google has started the week with a Google Doodle offering a rather belated acknowledgement of the contribution of computing of Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first theoretical software algorithm for her friend Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Lovelace, daughter of mad, bad, and dangerous to know Lord Byron, was a close …

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  1. Hollerith 1

    Not only, but also

    Not only did she write the first algorithm and fix the first bug, she grasped the implications of the machine and what, in effect, it could transform. To combine the practical and the visionary to that extent when the only 'computer' in existence was made of wood and cast iron is a not unimpressive feat of mental super-ability.

  2. dougal83

    Ah good old Ada 95. Best programming language ever! C is for noobs

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @dougal83

      You forgot the troll icon.

    2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Real programmers use an analytical engine.

      If it doesn't leak oil it's not a real computer

      1. Peter Simpson 1
        Facepalm

        The original

        Big Iron?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: leaking oil

        What is the computing power of an old Harley?

  3. Herby
    Trollface

    Great, Great Granddaughter?

    What could we say? Don't know if they were related, but certainly has geek value.

    Further content redacted as being NSFW

  4. Dropper

    Ada

    I remember many years writing multi-threaded ADA code on VMS systems. At the time it allowed us to create true multi-tasking applications, which you could do in C/C++ but doing so was over-complex and slow.

    My favourite.. erm.. app.. was missile intercept software.. brings a tear to the eye know my piece of code may have been used to blow someone's hardware out of the sky.

  5. Levente Szileszky
    Angel

    Err, once again I misread it for Linda (Lovelace)...

    ...the late star namesake of the coordination language Linda.*

    *:yes, more well-informed gents might remember her from this old movie called Deep Throat.

    1. southpacificpom
      Stop

      Re: Err, once again I misread it for Linda (Lovelace)...

      Bloody perverted mind!

      Having said that, the idea of a Linda Lovelace programming language might appeal to a lot of us.

      1. John Riddoch
        Coat

        Re: Err, once again I misread it for Linda (Lovelace)...

        "the idea of a Linda Lovelace programming language might appeal to a lot of us"

        Yeah, but you know it would suck...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Err, once again I misread it for Linda (Lovelace)...

          Or end up as perl (necklace)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ada...

    What you missed out is that Ada was trained up as a mathematician precisely because her father was Byron. The decision seems to have been along the lines of "far better that she become a working woman, and one in science at that - but stay out of trouble - than follow in her father's foot-steps."

    There is a very good "In our time" all about Ada Lovelace, which is in the archive, available for download from the BBC radio 4 web site. Well worth a listen, as is pretty much all IOT.

  7. AY

    Ada's words travelled widely

    I'm reminded that just over 30 years ago one of Ada's hand written texts on numerical analysis was discovered in a box of a few parts of Babbage's difference engine, in a hay shed on a farm in the Wanganui River region of the North Island of New Zealand! Many thanks are still due to the perspicacity of the discoverer, a Garry Tee, on a stormy Sunday night in Wanganui, to recognise that the parts were not old motorcycle parts and the text was an Ada original!

    AY

  8. Robert Grant

    Damn those school systems!

    If only they'd let girls do IT, we'd have legions of female programmers.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Damn those school systems!

      If they let the boys do poetry we would have legions of "mad bad and dangerous to know" men roaming around europe starting revolutions.

  9. Identity
    Angel

    Just for fun

    check out

    http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/stories/

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