What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
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What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
1–10 of 58 posts
Re: What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
#2Amazing article! There's a bug in it though. The LHS of the sum of cubes formula ends in n^2 instead of n^3.
Re: What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
#3[deleted]
Re: What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
#4Holy shit. I got shivers the moment I realized Sinclair actually finds and fixes a bug from the very first program written in 1843.
In her “diagram of development,” Lovelace gives the
fourth operation as v5 / v4. But the correct ordering
here is v4 / v5.
I was recently at the Musee des arts et metiers in Paris, and they have several original Pascalines on display. So many marvels packed into a very tight space, it is one of my favorite in Paris and I would highly recommend it. I'm not sure what they have on Lovelace, I'll admit I was pretty overwhelmed with the collection. Their computer collection alone is a museums worth, and they cover much, much more than just computer history (a lot of mechanical engineering for starters). If they don't have this algorithm on display, they absolutely should.
A leather-bound first edition Lovelace including this algorithm recently sold for about $120,000. That actually seems like a bargain when you think about the level of the accomplishment. [1]
I agree with OP that most likely the bug is in the transcription and not present in the original manuscript.
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/24/ada-lovelace-f...
Re: What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
#5This is really a very gripping piece, and I'm not actually a programmer. It's also interesting mathematically and just as general history, for lack of a better term.
Re: What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
#6Great article. In some ways it reminds me of Jonathan Blow's presentation titled "Truth in Game Design" [1]
The author is saying that Ada deserves the title of first programmer both because she did publish an elaborate algorithm and because she understood the potential of the Analytical Engine better than Babbage and Menabrea.
Jonathan Blow's presentation is more about that second point and how computers (or rather, sufficiently complex dynamical systems) can "give you something back that you didn't put in".
System theory is nothing new so it might not be exact equivalent of thinking about engines that can compose music in 1842, but it seems to me that it is not a widespread and well-understood concept as it should be, and that the public opinion is re-discovering it mainly through Deep Learning advancements.
Re: What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
#7This is a great article, and I also found myself shuddering to think what would happen if the world ever saw the first program I ever wrote (whatever that was).
Re: What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
#8Amazing article! There's a bug in it though. The LHS of the sum of cubes formula ends in n^2 instead of n^3.
There is an error in the squares formula as well. The correct formula is:
(n*(n+1)*(2*n+1))/6.Re: What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
#9Holy shit. I got shivers the moment I realized Sinclair actually finds and fixes a bug from the very first program written in 1843. In her “diagram of development,” Lovelace gives the fourth operation as v5 / v4. But the correct ordering here is v4 / v5. 1843! I was recently at the Musee des arts et metiers in Paris, and they have several original Pascalines on display. So many marvels packed into a very tight space,…
What else would you recommend checking out in Paris by way of museums?
Re: What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
#10This is a great article, and I also found myself shuddering to think what would happen if the world ever saw the first program I ever wrote (whatever that was).
For me, that's no big deal:
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
Even the horrible crap I wrote as an novice is probably less embarrassing to me that the stuff I wrote as a journeyman who shoulda known better.
Thankfully, the most embarrassing things are, like, spending 2 days configuring postfix and not realizing that I could just read the log files and it tells me specifically what isn't working. A valuable lesson, but embarrassment has its cost.