as the title says. many people have told me that Ada Lovelace invented the first computer code. as far as i could find, she only invented some sort of calculation for Bernoulli (sorry for spelling) numbers.
seems to me like saying “i invented the cap to the water bottle, before the water bottle was invented”
did she do something else? am i missing something?
edit: ah! thank you everyone, i understand!!
In: Mathematics
She contributed “code” to solve the Bernoulli equation for an Italian translation of Babbages works on the Analytical Engine.
Simulated versions of the machine required “code” that is different than Babbage gave in his own examples of how he expected it to function, so if she was working with an understanding of the machine based on what Babbage told her, her program probably would not have worked either.
She was a mathematician, and a remarkable person. I think it’s a stretch to call her the first programmer though, writing code for an unbuilt machine, that was never built, and that when simulated doesn’t operate as expected is a little bit of a stretch for me.
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