Ada Lovelace: The woman who invented coding, and her bug!

[@davidmosey687]

Thank you for your elegant and absorbing lecture/presentation. Lovelace was an extraordinarily talented woman dying at a cruelly early age, and her intellectual legacy is massive.

[@JohnnyWednesday]

You may be interested in "Plan 28", Doctor Lieu (if you've not heard about it already) - it's a project to document, fully understand, simulate and then build Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine (with his "Plan 28" design seemingly being the most complete). Ada's code shall of course be the first complete program it runs! I studied the history of computing and I spend a lot of time learning and writing in old languages on old hardware. There's nothing in this world I want more than a slice of time on the Analytical Engine! I happen to work on 3D engines and physical simulations so I'm hoping to join work on the simulator one day. However it does mean learning many aspects of Babbage's designs - which is like learning how to be a watchmaker with your eyes closed (Richard Dawkins would approve) - I can't hope to learn it all! but maybe I can learn one part of the machine and contribute :D

[@TheErichill]

John Mauchly, of ENIAC fame, opined that a big reason Babbage was unsuccessful is that he never froze the design for the Analytical Engine Another example of perfection being the enemy of the good.

[@SpaceMog]

Ughhh just like an academic!

[@bobdear5160]

Continuously changing the design was the cause if many project overruns when I was in IT. “Working from a spec is like walking on water…. They are both much easier if they are frozen…!” 😂

[@jeffreymorris1752]

That was more in-depth than I thought 10 minutes would allow. Good job. Sub'd.

[@SpaceMog]

Thanks so much!

[@electricAB]

Awesome video! I look forward to sharing this with my teenage daughters 💛

[@SpaceMog]

@@electricAB thank you 🥰

[@morenofranco9235]

Excellent presentation, Maggie. I have always been intrigued by the early history of the Computer. Thank you.

[@SpaceMog]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@husk79]

very interesting how it all begun.. i like that Ada not only excelled in the scientific and mathematical part.. but also in a more artistic way... an i can imagine back then... people who would excel in "programing" and sciences wouldn't be artistic at all... i think in many subjects it takes a different way of seeing things for it to excel beyond imagination ! also very well made video... the graphics made it really fun to watch too! excellent work!

[@FireFlyMaxx]

Thank you MOG. I had no clue that Ada Lovelace, was the proper parent of Code. I've known about Babbage since the 1980s. I worked for the game retailer Babbage's in the 90s as a teenager, where my love for digital entertainment was fostered.

[@rayjay848]

A deeper dive into RAdm Grace Hopper would be appreciated. There’s more than just the “bug” story.

[@generessler6282]

The NSA recently released old video of Hopper's lectures there. They're genius. Highly recommended.

[@TropicalCoder]

Beautiful illustrations!

[@john_hind]

Yes, but I could not find a credit. Artists deserve credit as well as female scientists! I thought maybe they came from Sydney Padua's graphic novel 'The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage', but the style seems rather different.

[@TropicalCoder]

@@john_hind To me they were obviously generated by AI.

[@john_hind]

@@TropicalCoder Really? If that is the case it is a much better AI than any I've come across to date and I'd love for it to be identified so I can have a play myself! And the women who created it deserve some credit!

[@AlanCanon2222]

Her notes on her translation of Menabrea's treatise on the Analytical Engine is a must read for computer scientists.

[@scratchanitch]

I've been a professional developer for decades and I like the Ratatouille perspective. Anyone can c̶o̶o̶k̶ code. Meaning, not everyone can be a great coder, but a great coder can come from anywhere. Oh, and with Ada being my first serious programming language, she's definitely a hero to me. BTW, Professor Hannah Fry also did a great documentary on Ada's story - definitely worth a watch.

[@ptonpc]

Imagine what could have happened if Babbage and Lovelace's work had continued.

[@SpaceMog]

the possibilities...

[@ArturdeSousaRocha]

Love the illustrations, even if they are not quite lifelike.

[@67comet]

:) The illustrations remind me of the covers on "Harlequin Romance" novels. Ada was a complete genius. I'm glad you're showing her some love.

[@emilefeltesse]

Very well told. Thank you so much for your videos I always follow with pleasure.

[@SpaceMog]

My pleasure!

[@NobodyOfNote-qv5wh]

Thanks for the video. The promotion of all STEM subjects to anyone, male or female, is so important. Here in NZ, Physics, Chemistry and Biology are watered down to 'Science' until Year 11 (15-16 years old), which I think is totally wrong. I absolutely loved Physics from age 11 when I started that subject (Chemistry & Biology were separate subjects taught by specialist teachers) , and it led to me doing a 40 year career in Engineering. The love of Physics (and Space) is why I follow your posts! On a different topic, I recommend to anyone Chris Hadfield's 'An Astronauts Guide to Life'. I particularly like his thoughts about success and failure and how that should not define who you are, or your own self esteem; your own actions are what really count, not what others say or do, or life's disappointments. This venture, the idea that you can learn off the internet from people like yourself, could well be the answer to a frankly lack-lustre education system. Maybe a "quiet revolution" is happening....???? Keep going Dr Maggie!!!!!

[@MrGaborseres]

Wow 🙂 what a story ☺️ Thanks for bringing it to us 👍 🌹

[@NeoNorse]

As a former professional programmer (male) my coding heroes were always Ada Lovelace ('natch), Grace Hopper and Margaret Hamilton, she who programmed the Apollo Guidance Computer that people now snidely say is stupider than their smartphones. Thank you for showcasing two of my top three!

[@DavidBrant]

Love this Dr Lieu - great images too!🔥🔥Ada, just like Jocelyn bell, Marie Curie, Hedy Lamarr and many other incredible pioneers in science. ❤

[@SpaceMog]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@humanetiger]

Love the illustrations.

[@sjng68]

Thanks for another great vid. I remember learning Ada the programming language during my uni degree in the late 80s.

[@paulalexandredumasseauvan2357]

THANK YOU for introducing ada lovelace! very much enjoyed your presentation 👍☺

[@stevenyee8967]

Very interesting. Wow, I was never taught or mentioned of Ada Lovelace as the first female computer programmer when I was attending computer classes. Of course, I never had a bright and talented teacher as you. 😊

[@tolkienfan1972]

No. Not just the first female computer programmer. The first computer programmer overall.

[@SpaceMog]

Glad you enjoyed it! What language coding did you do?

[@stevenyee8967]

@@SpaceMog I did assembler on the IBM mainframe

[@ronjones8580]

thanks for this bit of history mog! there was a programming language named ADA used by military contractors in the 1980's named after her. you are quite correct that women have been a fundamental part of programming from the very beginning. fyi-i once watched Grace Hopper on the tonite show with Johnny Carson where she gave him about an 18 inch length of wire. johnny asked her what that was and she told him it was a nanosecond-the amount of time it took a charge to go from one end of the wire to the other! you can probably find clips of it online if you're interested!

[@jeffmosesjr]

Another brilliant video from Dr Lieu. Intelligent and beautiful ladies are amazing!

[@m_jackson]

Bru, it's 2024. Intelligent and beautiful people. We don't differentiate between the genders anymore. My hairy chest with moobs is just as attractive. Where's my kiss?

[@bobdear5160]

Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was an 8th century mathematician who lived and worked in Bagdad. He is credited with creating the first algorithm and introduced the use if abstract symbols. Ada Lovelace created the first algorithm to be run on a machine (unless Babbage’s almost trivial effort counts as the first algorithm for his analytical engine). Grace Hooper was a renowned early programmer, working for the US Navy (she was a Rear Admiral), and invented the idea of a compiler - Flowmatic was her first and later she designed - Cobol. Early computer compilers enabled programmers to write in a language that could then be compiled, producing the machine language (aka object language) version that could run on a machine that that compiler version targeted. That was a huge step as it meant that the Cobol source code was independent of the target machine. Hopper did the academic work to come up with machine independent languages. I’ve probably oversimplified some of the above but I spent 40 years in the IT industry and was very grateful fir her pioneering work that I and thousands of other programmers relied on.

[@blengi]

sieve of Eratosthenes is an algorithm that predates that by thousand years.

[@bobdear5160]

A sieve for rejecting numbers with divisors, hence generating just primes. I suppose that Counting is also an algorithm (just add one to the previous number). Al-Khwarizmi generalised such processes (the abstract bit) but it was still parchment and ink or similar until Babbage’s machine and Ada’s programming of it. The Antikythera mechanism is worth looking up as well - it is an Ancient Greek hand-powered orrery (model of the Solar System). It is the oldest known example of an analogue computer. It could be used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance. It could also be used to track the four-year cycle of athletic games similar to an Olympiad, the cycle of the ancient Olympic Games and has maybe more secrets still hidden.

[@blengi]

​@@bobdear5160 you said credited with first algorithm yet per wiki _"In mathematics, the sieve of Eratosthenes is _*_an ancient algorithm_*_ for finding all prime numbers up to any given limit."_ either you or wiki are wrong. lol. I've alluded to antikythera elsewhere albeit a bit in jest.

[@bobdear5160]

@ point taken. Maybe what is wanted is EFFICIENT algorithms that just generate the answer(s) you are needing. Erastosthenes requires you to look at or list all the numbers(up to your practical limit). You then strike out every even number, every 3rd number, every 5th number etc from the complete list. Some numbers are looked at and crossed out multiple times (210 has factors of 2, 3, 5, 7 for example). Moving to Arabic numerals from Roman might give a few short cuts as there are rules for checking if a number is divisible by 2, 3, 5, 11 and I’m sure several more.

[@happyhome41]

What a wonderful presentation. Big minds, big hearts, *may* trump all.

[@SpaceMog]

Thanks so much 🙂

[@MattNolanCustom]

It is my understanding that Ada also translated for Babbage from French key details about how to use punched cards for programming sequences of operations - in use on the Jacquard Weaving Loom since 1804. The use of punched holes pre-dates Jacquard, with punched tape being used to control looms (though still with some human control, not fully automated) in 1725 by Basile Bouchon.

[@thomask9694]

A very nice and well researched video, as always, but I strongly dislike the mix of real photos and AI-generated ones without a visible footnote, especially for this historic topic.

[@SpaceMog]

Thanks! Added now!

[@whatwhodid7152]

wow, I learned so much in 10 minutes from this video that I never knew about Ada Lovelace. it sparked my interest and I need to find out more

[@m_jackson]

When I first saw her name, I thought she was an adult movie actress from the 70s. Not disappointed to find out the truth though.

[@kevinmcfarlane2752]

I was aware of her. There ought to be a movie, if there isn’t an obscure one already. I believe there are some other colourful aspects of her life that were not covered here too.

[@anthonyberent4611]

Admiral Grace Hopper didn't invent the term "bug". As she pointed out in a recorded talk of hers that I saw, her joke (the first real bug in the computer) would have made no sense if she had. Also the term was in use in radar and other electronics before it was used in computing.

[@SpaceMog]

never heard of bugs in electronics or radar... so i cant comment :-)

[@pierrec1590]

Fun fact, in 1979, the American DoD named their brand new computer language in her honor, Ada.

[@SpaceMog]

Nice one! There is also the ada programming language 😲

[@tolkienfan1972]

4:19 the screen reads "Analytical Engin"

[@SpaceMog]

Close enough 😂🙈

[@datamuc]

Where are this images from? Some graphic novel about lovelace?

[@MattNolanCustom]

they look AI-generated to me, being inaccurate, inconsistent and ficticious (no artist in the know would draw a difference engine with plumbing!)

[@SpaceMog]

@@MattNolanCustom Ai generated is as good as the prompt-engineer.... I guess I still need to work on that 😅

[@MattNolanCustom]

@@SpaceMog oh, I wouldn't be so hard on yourself. I think the dataset the AI was trained on has a lot to do with it too, plus the way that neural networks (mostly opaquely) work. I do worry that we're losing a lot of veracity very rapidly right now, and many people simply can't tell.

[@Goodmusicandlove]

The ai really ran with the love and lace in her name,with it spitting out thirst traps 😂😂

[@SpaceMog]

Hahahaha

[@johnlewis8664]

It’s quite frustrating that in school we were taught about Babbage but not Ada Lovelace, we never seen to get the full picture. Hopefully it’s different now

[@JohnnyWednesday]

She has long been recognized and admired in computer science. My school didn't even mention Babbage!

[@johnlewis8664]

@@JohnnyWednesday I’m very pleased by that

[@SpaceMog]

That's too bad, they teach about her here in Nottingham, but may be biased that her family and grave is just 30 minutes up the road!

[@johnlewis8664]

@@SpaceMog it’s probably a generational thing but I’m glad that she now gets the credit she deserves

[@spaceherpies]

​@@johnlewis8664 its not good that Babbage wasn't taught.

[@bobdear5160]

I thought that the original bugs were moths that short circuited the valve based electronics in early computers and that the name was then transferred to anything that stopped a program (aka algorithm) producing the right answer consistently. Of course an inout read error of a paper tape or punched card program could also result in unexplained errors or bugs, but mostly a program with bugs in was “working as designed”….. I used to put in illegal instructions to force an error (aka an abend) and check that all the storage errors associated with that route had the right values before removing the deliberate error. That way I could ensure that all routes had been tested at least once.

[@theunknownunknowns256]

Ada was on the spectrum for sure. I mean, we are all on the spectrum, but she is The Accountant movie level for sure.

[@m_jackson]

And that's why I'm working on a time machine. Our rainbows will cancel each other out, and that's less achey than having a vasectomy

[@m_jackson]

Hi. I'm really sorry to inform you, but your spaceship appears to be heading close to the site of a large explosion on the body in the right window. Don't go left though, it's a serious meteor shower. Save the cats onboard first. Thank you. Also, thanks for the videos. Keep warm, we've got spring here, so neener.

[@SpaceMog]

Thanks for the heads up! I'll try to steer clear

[@shahmuizz5872]

Wtf2 hour ago😂 i just search ada lovelace

[@SpaceMog]

its destiny!

[@EverythingInMyBrain]

One of my daughters is named after her. The other is named after Rosalind Franklin.

[@alnilam2151]

A, Florence Nightingale of her time; young unknown + departed but, even then Fair was an Illusion! {/] ;x

[@SpaceMog]

💃

[@alnilam2151]

@@SpaceMog 😘

[@michaelpboyd]

Gemini created these magnificent illustrations? I love them and feel they added so much to this great video (I was directed here from the Google Labs "Learn About" experiment, btw). Love to know how to prompt Gemini to draw scenes such as these, if anyone knows and/or cares to share), Again, a surprising find that I enjoyed very much.

[@ARWest-bp4yb]

Dr. Maggie, after you're done checking your code for bugs, don't forget to check your hard-drive for moths!🦋🦋 Fascinating story, Happy Ada Lovelace day!🥳

[@m_jackson]

It was a recursive bug, it just went round and round the light

[@HarryNicNicholas]

8:43 lol, yes "engin" still, happy ada day and steer clear of artists!.

[@SpaceMog]

😂

[@Broken_robot1986]

So amazing, Ada we love you! Freaking bugs! Crazy how all these smarty pants were dying in their 30s.

[@SpaceMog]

Too young 😭

[@blengi]

Didn't Ada Lovelace: have blue eyes _" both of Ada's parents had blue eyes and so it would be impossible for her to have any other color."?_ did users of the roman abacus or those that were used earlier by the Greeks and Babylonians have algorithms? Were they "coded" up by logicians? Who coded the firmware abstraction presumably before it was built into the antikythera mechanism's cogs?

[@Casey_Jones]

As the video said "Happy Happpy Ada Lovelace Day," who if I'm seeing this right from the AI images used died in 199990 or was born then? I don't know. The AI images were far more distracting

[@SpaceMog]

Need better ai 🙈🙈🙈

[@ChrisM-hx9kv]

Commenting to feed the bugs so they don't go into the algorithm 🙃

[@SpaceMog]

Thank you!

[@Nikolas_Davis]

1:15 Erm, the Greek War of Independence was not fought in the 1500s, you might want to update your illustrations 🙂

[@SpaceMog]

what makes it seem 1500s? 😂🙈

[@Nikolas_Davis]

​@@SpaceMog Well, the weaponry, the towers in the background, the spears, the helmets... Byron is sort of appropriately dressed, but he might want to lose the sword and grab a musket (not that he got the chance to use either much, anyway) If this was AI-generated, I'd love to see the prompt.

[@KaiseruSoze]

There's even a programing language named after her. Some say that Ada is better than C++.

[@andreimiga8101]

Ada is a very cool language, but unfortunately a lot of people don't like it because it is "wordy" (like Pascal). It was created by the US military for their systems, but it never got any real traction, mostly because it was way ahead of its time and all compilers were very expensive, because you were not allowed to sell uncertified Ada compilers. Still, even today it is not a dead language. Ada being better than C++ is an interesting debate, but one thing to mention is that, although it is not fully memory safe, it is safe enough that Ada folks can challenge Rust, not something that C++ will do anytime soon.

[@scratchanitch]

@@andreimiga8101 Indeed. My thesis was on distributed Ada so I have a bit of a soft-spot for it. IIRC, some air traffic control systems were developed with Ada (and Oracle PL/SQL is heavily based on its syntax too).

[@tolkienfan1972]

Everything is better than C++

[@SpaceMog]

Yes!

[@andreimiga8101]

@@tolkienfan1972 The problem with C++ is that a lot of code doesn't really follow modern guidelines. I always facepalm when I see raw pointers in high level code, or raw references in all but the most trivial contexts (like passing parameters). C++98 was like a gun without any safety. C++11 and later added safety switches, and people just refuse to use them. If C++ was free of the old baggage and had a fully usable and fast standard library (looking at you, std::regex), it would be a great language. Unfortunately, they just keep adding more and more useless complexity into the language, when none of it is needed.

[@Metallic-Sun]

Grace Hopper found a bug. 😂

[@YousufAhmad0]

Picturing Space Mog pawing and hissing at bugs on her screen 😂❤

[@peterdore2572]

Awesome video breaking a bit from the Space Mold. But as a Historian who loves History, im not sure people would have enjoyed the beginning when you suddenly start talking about Inc*stous Parents and Sat@nism. I know Americans are more sensitive than British folks and wouldnt want kids, expecting a Science video to talk about stuff like that. Personally I would never care about that language, cuz im an adult and its perfectly normal. But Script-wise, as a producer, I would have avoided that small part, because it is also Unnecessary. I really enjoyed the knowledge shown in this video and I am looking forward to more :) My comment is simply an Advice. Take it or leave :)

[@SpaceMog]

Good point! Thanks for tip!

[@jeffrey5961]

Does Dr Lieu use AI to search for bugs in her codes? Interesting to see AI used in videos.

[@SpaceMog]

Collab is great for writing code but not for bugs, but gemini has helped me several times with errors or at least put me on the right direction. Saved me countless hours on slack overflow! :-)

[@mitakeet]

Programming _is_ debugging. Source: 30+ year professional programmer ;-)

[@SpaceMog]

😂 its so satifying when the code runs though!

[@mitakeet]

@@SpaceMog There've been a tiny handful of cases (like maybe 3) in my career where it _wasn't_ my fault. That was the biggest thing I had to accept as a developer: It's Always My Fault ;-) And there've been a handful of cases (slightly better than tiny, but only slightly) where things ran exactly as I expected when I finished writing and began testing. So rare that I'm generally convinced I ran my test wrong rather than my code was right ;-)

[@HolographNamedJames]

Great video!!! I have a hypothesis. Men, are the fragile ones!

[@m_jackson]

We don't differentiate between genders my friend. At least I hope not, because I don't want to be represented by someone who places commas in the wrong places and uses too many exclamation marks.

[@HolographNamedJames]

@@m_jackson looks, like, Im, correct!!!

[@matt92hun]

Having a child from his sister sounds very British and very Greek at the same time.

[@SpaceMog]

😂

[@TheALPHA1550]

"Invested" "coding"

[@theemissary1313]

Obligatory comment for the algorithm

[@SpaceMog]

Thank you!

[@rahantr1]

Euclid, Eratosthenes and Al-Khwarizmi turned in their graves but when they learnt that Ada's father attended cleansing of Muslims and Jews from Balkans then they stopped complaining.