> What is a computer? What isn't a computer? If you can't answer that question, you don't have a computer. The Church-Turing thesis is the invention of the computer.
I don't get this sentiment. So if we had the same devices we did nowadays, with all the same capabilities, but nobody had developed the theory behind computation... then we wouldn't actually have computers? Even though we could do exactly the same things as we do now?
Or heck, so this means even a modern layperson can't have computers? Because in order to have a computer they have to be able to define the Church-Turing thesis for you first? If I hand my laptop to my grandma then suddenly she has... what? An email-receiving brick with a touchscreen that somehow isn't a computer?
> Lovelace invented computers because [...]
No, what she's given credit for is being the first computer programmer (in our modern definitions). Now even that is disputed [1], but regardless, taking it at face value, that's what she gets credit for. Not for inventing the device she was using, but for tasks she realized she could use it for, which Babbage (allegedly?) did not realize.
> the essence of the computer is the ability to perform computations, not just calculations
I don't know if you can tease out a comprehensive definition for what exactly means here, because I don't think I can give a natural definition that would somehow pinpoint the credit to Lovelace rather than Babbage or Turing. Even if you look up what 'computation' means now, the dictionary will say something like "mathematical calculation". The only way I see to exclude 'calculation' from it seems to be to say "the ability to perform Turing-complete calculations", a formal notion which just didn't exist back then, so the credit for that wouldn't go to Lovelace.
> Hopper invented computers because a general-purpose computer is a computation machine with a human-friendly interface.
No, she's given (like you acknowledged) credit for making the first linker. Not the first computer. Nobody I've ever seen tries to argue she invented the first computer. Are these claims you actually hear in the real world?
> Before Hopper, computers were only ever programmed directly in machine code; every step of a computer program was a specific operation. Before A-0, we just had computation machines, but no human-centered interface. After A-0, we had computers.
Great, so the credit to give here would be that Hopper invented high-level programming languages (or something along those lines). Not that she just flat-out invented the computer!.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#Controversy_over_...