The first programmer is Augusta Ada Lovelace
December 10 is called the Day of the programmer in honor of the first representative of this not too ancient profession who was also born on this day.
Augusta Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815. She was the only daughter of the great English poet George Gordon Byron (1788 - 1824) and Annabella Byron, nee Milbank (1792 - 1860). "She is an extraordinary woman, poet, mathematician, philosopher," Byron wrote about his future wife in 1813. Her parents broke up when the girl was two months old and she did not see her father anymore.
Ada inherited from her mother a love of mathematics and many features of her father, including a character that is close in emotional character.
Byron devoted several touching lines to his daughter in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, but he worried in advance in a letter to his cousin: “I hope that God will reward her with anything, but not with a poetic gift ...
Ada received a wonderful upbringing. An important place in it was occupied by the study of mathematics - to a large extent under the influence of the mother. Her teacher was the famous English mathematician and logician Augustus de Morgan. By 1834, she had her first acquaintance with an outstanding mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage, the creator of the first digital computer with program control, which he called “analytical”. Babbage, who was familiar with Lady Byron, supported the young Ada's fascination with mathematics. Babbage constantly followed Ada's scientific studies, he selected and sent her articles and books, primarily on mathematical questions. Ada's classes were encouraged by friends of her family — Augustus de Morgan and his wife, spouses Sommerville and others. Ada attends D. Lardner's public lectures about the car. Together with Sommerville and others, she first visits Babbage and inspects his workshop. After the first visit, Ada began to visit Babbage often, sometimes accompanied by Mrs. De Morgan. In her memoirs, de Morgan described one of the first visits as follows: “While some guests looked at this amazing device with such a feeling as they say, the savages first saw a mirror or heard a shot from a gun, Miss Byron, still quite young, could understand machine performance and appreciated the great merit of the invention “
Augusta Ada's family life has developed happily. In 1835, Ada Byron married a 29-year-old Lord King at the age of nineteen, who later became the Earl of Lovelace. The husband had nothing against his wife’s scientific studies and even encouraged her in them. True, appreciating her mental abilities, he lamented: “What a great general you could be!” The Lovelace spouses were secular, regularly organizing parties and evenings in their London home and country estate Okhat Park. Ada's marriage did not distance her from Babbage; their relationship became more cordial. At the beginning of dating Babbage attracted the mathematical abilities of the girl. Later Babbage found in her a man who supported all his bold undertakings. Ada was almost the same age as his early deceased daughter. All this led to a warm and sincere attitude to Ada for many years.
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Ada was short, and Babbage, when referring to her, often called her fairy. Once the editor of the magazine “Examinator” described it as follows: “She was amazing, and her genius (and she possessed genius) was not poetic, but mathematical and metaphysical, her mind was in constant motion, which combined with great exactingness. Along with such masculine qualities as toughness and decisiveness, Lady Lovelace was characterized by delicacy and refinement of the most refined character. Her manners, tastes, education ... were feminine in the good sense of the word, and the superficial observer could never have imagined the power and knowledge that lay hidden under the female appeal. As much as she disliked frivolity and banality, she loved to enjoy a real intellectual society.
The Lovelace couple in 1836 had a son, in 1838 a daughter and in 1839 a son. Naturally, this tore Ada off for a while from studying mathematics. But soon after the birth of her third child, she turns to Babbage with a request to find a mathematics teacher for her. At the same time, she writes that she has the strength to reach as far in achieving her goals as she wishes. Babbage, in a letter dated November 29, 1839, replies to Lovelace: “I think that your mathematical skills are so obvious that they do not need to be tested. I made inquiries, but I didn’t manage to find a person whom I could recommend to you as a teacher. I will continue the search "
Since the beginning of 1841, Lovelace seriously engaged in the study of Babbage machines . In one of the letters to Babbage, Ada writes: “You must tell me the basic information concerning your car. I have a good reason to wish it. ” In a letter dated January 12, 1841, she lays out her plans: "... Some time in the future (maybe for 3 or 4, and maybe even many years) my head can serve you for your goals and plans ... It is on this matter, I want to seriously talk to you. " This offer was accepted with appreciation by Babbage. Since that time, their cooperation has not been interrupted and has given excellent results.
In October 1842, an article by Menabrea was published, and Ada began to translate it. The outline and structure of the notes they worked out together. After completing the next note, Ada sent it to Babbage, who edited it, made various comments and sent it. The work was transferred to the printing house on July 6, 1843.
The highlight of Lovelace's work was the compilation of a program (numbers) for calculating Bernoulli numbers. In the comments of Lovelace, the first three computational programs in the world compiled by her for the Babbage machine were given. The simplest and most described of them is the program for solving a system of two linear algebraic equations with two unknowns. When analyzing this program, the concept of work cells (work variables) was first introduced and the idea of ​​a consistent change in their content was used. One step from this idea remains to the assignment operator, one of the fundamental operations of all programming languages, including machine languages. The second program was compiled to calculate the values ​​of the trigonometric function with multiple repetitions of a given sequence of computational operations; for this procedure, Lovelace introduced the concept of a cycle - one of the fundamental structures of structured programming. In the third program, designed to calculate Bernoulli numbers, recurrent nested loops were already used. In her comments, Lovelace also expressed a great conjecture that computational operations can be performed not only with numbers, but also with other objects, without which computers would have remained just powerful high-speed calculators.
Since 1844, Ada Lovelace is more and more interested in playing races, especially since she herself drove and loved horses perfectly. Both Babbage and William Lovelace were playing at the races, and Babbage, who was interested in applied questions of the theory of probability, examined the game of races from these positions and looked for the optimal game system. However, Babbage and Ada's husband relatively soon refused to participate in the game. But Ada, gambling and stubborn, continued to play. Moreover, Lady Ada became close with a certain John Cross who blackmailed her. She spent almost all the funds belonging to her and by 1848 had made large debts. Then her mother had to pay off these debts, and at the same time buy out the incriminating letters from John Cross. At the beginning of the 50s, the first signs of a disease appeared that claimed Ada Lovelace’s life. In November 1850, he wrote Babbage: "My health ... so bad that I want to accept your offer and appear on your medical friends upon arrival in London." Despite the measures taken, the disease progressed and was accompanied by severe suffering. November 27, 1852 Ada Lovelace died before reaching 37 years old. Together with an outstanding intellect, her father gave her this terrible heredity - early death - the poet died at the same age ... She was buried next to her father in the family crypt Byron.
Successes were given to her with great effort and not without damage to her health. Few managed to do for his short life Augustus Ade Lovelace. But the little that came out of her pen inscribed her name in the history of computational mathematics and computing technology as the first programmer. The ADA language, developed in 1980, is named in memory of Ada Lovelace. It is one of the universal programming languages. This language was widely spoken in the United States, and the US Department of Defense even approved the name “Hell” as the name of a single programming language for the US military, and later for all of NATO.
Also in honor of Ada Lovelace two small cities are named in America - in the states of Alabama and Oklahoma. Oklahoma also has a college named after her.
Augusta Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815. She was the only daughter of the great English poet George Gordon Byron (1788 - 1824) and Annabella Byron, nee Milbank (1792 - 1860). "She is an extraordinary woman, poet, mathematician, philosopher," Byron wrote about his future wife in 1813. Her parents broke up when the girl was two months old and she did not see her father anymore.
Ada inherited from her mother a love of mathematics and many features of her father, including a character that is close in emotional character.
Byron devoted several touching lines to his daughter in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, but he worried in advance in a letter to his cousin: “I hope that God will reward her with anything, but not with a poetic gift ...
Ada received a wonderful upbringing. An important place in it was occupied by the study of mathematics - to a large extent under the influence of the mother. Her teacher was the famous English mathematician and logician Augustus de Morgan. By 1834, she had her first acquaintance with an outstanding mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage, the creator of the first digital computer with program control, which he called “analytical”. Babbage, who was familiar with Lady Byron, supported the young Ada's fascination with mathematics. Babbage constantly followed Ada's scientific studies, he selected and sent her articles and books, primarily on mathematical questions. Ada's classes were encouraged by friends of her family — Augustus de Morgan and his wife, spouses Sommerville and others. Ada attends D. Lardner's public lectures about the car. Together with Sommerville and others, she first visits Babbage and inspects his workshop. After the first visit, Ada began to visit Babbage often, sometimes accompanied by Mrs. De Morgan. In her memoirs, de Morgan described one of the first visits as follows: “While some guests looked at this amazing device with such a feeling as they say, the savages first saw a mirror or heard a shot from a gun, Miss Byron, still quite young, could understand machine performance and appreciated the great merit of the invention “
Augusta Ada's family life has developed happily. In 1835, Ada Byron married a 29-year-old Lord King at the age of nineteen, who later became the Earl of Lovelace. The husband had nothing against his wife’s scientific studies and even encouraged her in them. True, appreciating her mental abilities, he lamented: “What a great general you could be!” The Lovelace spouses were secular, regularly organizing parties and evenings in their London home and country estate Okhat Park. Ada's marriage did not distance her from Babbage; their relationship became more cordial. At the beginning of dating Babbage attracted the mathematical abilities of the girl. Later Babbage found in her a man who supported all his bold undertakings. Ada was almost the same age as his early deceased daughter. All this led to a warm and sincere attitude to Ada for many years.
')
Ada was short, and Babbage, when referring to her, often called her fairy. Once the editor of the magazine “Examinator” described it as follows: “She was amazing, and her genius (and she possessed genius) was not poetic, but mathematical and metaphysical, her mind was in constant motion, which combined with great exactingness. Along with such masculine qualities as toughness and decisiveness, Lady Lovelace was characterized by delicacy and refinement of the most refined character. Her manners, tastes, education ... were feminine in the good sense of the word, and the superficial observer could never have imagined the power and knowledge that lay hidden under the female appeal. As much as she disliked frivolity and banality, she loved to enjoy a real intellectual society.
The Lovelace couple in 1836 had a son, in 1838 a daughter and in 1839 a son. Naturally, this tore Ada off for a while from studying mathematics. But soon after the birth of her third child, she turns to Babbage with a request to find a mathematics teacher for her. At the same time, she writes that she has the strength to reach as far in achieving her goals as she wishes. Babbage, in a letter dated November 29, 1839, replies to Lovelace: “I think that your mathematical skills are so obvious that they do not need to be tested. I made inquiries, but I didn’t manage to find a person whom I could recommend to you as a teacher. I will continue the search "
Since the beginning of 1841, Lovelace seriously engaged in the study of Babbage machines . In one of the letters to Babbage, Ada writes: “You must tell me the basic information concerning your car. I have a good reason to wish it. ” In a letter dated January 12, 1841, she lays out her plans: "... Some time in the future (maybe for 3 or 4, and maybe even many years) my head can serve you for your goals and plans ... It is on this matter, I want to seriously talk to you. " This offer was accepted with appreciation by Babbage. Since that time, their cooperation has not been interrupted and has given excellent results.
In October 1842, an article by Menabrea was published, and Ada began to translate it. The outline and structure of the notes they worked out together. After completing the next note, Ada sent it to Babbage, who edited it, made various comments and sent it. The work was transferred to the printing house on July 6, 1843.
The highlight of Lovelace's work was the compilation of a program (numbers) for calculating Bernoulli numbers. In the comments of Lovelace, the first three computational programs in the world compiled by her for the Babbage machine were given. The simplest and most described of them is the program for solving a system of two linear algebraic equations with two unknowns. When analyzing this program, the concept of work cells (work variables) was first introduced and the idea of ​​a consistent change in their content was used. One step from this idea remains to the assignment operator, one of the fundamental operations of all programming languages, including machine languages. The second program was compiled to calculate the values ​​of the trigonometric function with multiple repetitions of a given sequence of computational operations; for this procedure, Lovelace introduced the concept of a cycle - one of the fundamental structures of structured programming. In the third program, designed to calculate Bernoulli numbers, recurrent nested loops were already used. In her comments, Lovelace also expressed a great conjecture that computational operations can be performed not only with numbers, but also with other objects, without which computers would have remained just powerful high-speed calculators.
Since 1844, Ada Lovelace is more and more interested in playing races, especially since she herself drove and loved horses perfectly. Both Babbage and William Lovelace were playing at the races, and Babbage, who was interested in applied questions of the theory of probability, examined the game of races from these positions and looked for the optimal game system. However, Babbage and Ada's husband relatively soon refused to participate in the game. But Ada, gambling and stubborn, continued to play. Moreover, Lady Ada became close with a certain John Cross who blackmailed her. She spent almost all the funds belonging to her and by 1848 had made large debts. Then her mother had to pay off these debts, and at the same time buy out the incriminating letters from John Cross. At the beginning of the 50s, the first signs of a disease appeared that claimed Ada Lovelace’s life. In November 1850, he wrote Babbage: "My health ... so bad that I want to accept your offer and appear on your medical friends upon arrival in London." Despite the measures taken, the disease progressed and was accompanied by severe suffering. November 27, 1852 Ada Lovelace died before reaching 37 years old. Together with an outstanding intellect, her father gave her this terrible heredity - early death - the poet died at the same age ... She was buried next to her father in the family crypt Byron.
Successes were given to her with great effort and not without damage to her health. Few managed to do for his short life Augustus Ade Lovelace. But the little that came out of her pen inscribed her name in the history of computational mathematics and computing technology as the first programmer. The ADA language, developed in 1980, is named in memory of Ada Lovelace. It is one of the universal programming languages. This language was widely spoken in the United States, and the US Department of Defense even approved the name “Hell” as the name of a single programming language for the US military, and later for all of NATO.
Also in honor of Ada Lovelace two small cities are named in America - in the states of Alabama and Oklahoma. Oklahoma also has a college named after her.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/80800/
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