she understood that the analytical engine/mechanical computer could be used symbolically, way beyond the numerical calculations that babbage built it for.
she foresaw how powerful that could be. when she was dying (of ovarian cancer), she said i would give all the days i have left for just three days a hundred years from now.
This was like the first thing we learned in history of computers in university.
I would have guessed you’d have learned about Charles Babbage first
Okay I don’t have the time to research this, but if this is the reason Adafruit is called Adafruit then that is fucking sick
It is indeed. It’s based off the founders online username “LadyAda” which was an homage to Ada Lovelace. The founder is Limor Fried, she’s pretty awesome.
There’s also a programming language originally used for missile guidance called Ada, I had to learn it in university back in the dark ages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)
Please know I’ve never designed missile guidance systems.
You weren’t at York were you?
I was not Dave
Long shot. I also learnt Ada. York’s justification was that “nobody would know it already, so nobody’s got an advantage” :)
Our justification was that Ratheon and Lockheed Martin held recruitment seminars and actively wanted this language to programme their avionics and guidance systems.
I learnt it but then did my industrial placement with the Red Cross working out ways to map land mine fields autonomously, because fuck the war machine.
