BASIC
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While there is some dispute over who should rightly be called the first computer programmer, many have awarded this designation to Ada Byron, the Countess of Lovelace. Raised by her mother and educated extensively in mathematics and logic so that she might follow a different path from her father, Lord Byron, Ada Byron is an illustrative example of the struggle to keep computation apart from poetics. While aesthetics and processing may mingle in 10 PRINT, far too often in history they have been seen as opposites, the Dionysus and Apollo of the digital world. | While there is some dispute over who should rightly be called the first computer programmer, many have awarded this designation to Ada Byron, the Countess of Lovelace. Raised by her mother and educated extensively in mathematics and logic so that she might follow a different path from her father, Lord Byron, Ada Byron is an illustrative example of the struggle to keep computation apart from poetics. While aesthetics and processing may mingle in 10 PRINT, far too often in history they have been seen as opposites, the Dionysus and Apollo of the digital world. | ||
| − | Ada Lovelace's contributions as an early programmer are most evident in her translation of and notes to an Italian article about Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine by Louis Menebrea. In this work, completed in 1843, she envisioned the Analytical Engine as a general-purpose computer and described an algorithm that could be used to output Bernoulli numbers. Although the computer to execute Lovelace's program was never built, her project made an important contribution to the modern idea of the computer program (Fuegi & Francis). This contribution was the concept that a program consisted of an algorithm delineated in mathematical notation. | + | Ada Lovelace's contributions as an early programmer are most evident in her translation of and notes to an Italian article about Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine by Louis Menebrea. In this work, completed in 1843, she envisioned the Analytical Engine as a general-purpose computer and described an algorithm that could be used to output Bernoulli numbers. Although the computer to execute Lovelace's program was never built, her project made an important contribution to the idea of a general-purpose computer and the modern idea of the computer program (Fuegi & Francis). Lovelace's "program" was an algorithm described in mathematical notation. |
The computer programs that followed in the electro-mechanical and early electronic age of computing were less intelligible than Lovelace's algorithm, bearing little relationship to any kind of written word -- or numbers. For example, the ENIAC, a fully electronic computer built at the University of Pennsylvania from 1943 to 1945, was programmed initially by plugging in an elaborate set of cables (da Cruz). To run particular calculations, constants were then set using dials. | The computer programs that followed in the electro-mechanical and early electronic age of computing were less intelligible than Lovelace's algorithm, bearing little relationship to any kind of written word -- or numbers. For example, the ENIAC, a fully electronic computer built at the University of Pennsylvania from 1943 to 1945, was programmed initially by plugging in an elaborate set of cables (da Cruz). To run particular calculations, constants were then set using dials. | ||
