Ok, I admit that I just learned who she was for the first time today. I probably learned about her in school at some point. But you know how we forget that info once we are grown, right? 🙂 @jeffreyhaas sent me a “Happy Ada Lovelace Day” message on Twitter so I quickly jumped on Wikipedia to find out what the heck he was talking about.
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815, London – 27 November 1852, Marylebone, London), born Augusta Ada Byron, was the only legitimate child of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron. She is widely known in modern times simply as Ada Lovelace.
She is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage‘s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She is today appreciated as the “first programmer” since she was writing programs—that is, manipulating symbols according to rules—for a machine that Babbage had not yet built. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities.[1]
Read her Wikipedia page for her whole story.
As I sit here at my desk at work in an IT department, I think about being in IT myself, how it came about, and the other women that I know in IT. Currently there are 11 guys and 5 girls sitting around me. The rest are out sick today and they are all guys. I believe there are 21 people in our department. I used to work as a Computer Technician. I was always the only girl in a group of about 10 going to lunch, etc. I got used to it. Sometimes it was kinda cool to be the only girl. And that is the usual picture in the tech world. So, when a “girl” comes along that really knows her stuff, people take notice.
There is not any one person that i want to salute on this day. I dedicate this post to all women in IT that are doing their thing and showing the guys that they can hold their own. Sometimes it’s not easy. Guys think that they can do things better than girls usuall don’t they? Well we will show them! LOL.
Who are you saluting on this day? Leave a comment and a link to your post and let everyone know.
Leave a Reply