[wongarsu]

Ada Lovelace is often credited as the first computer programmer. She died in the late 1800s. Programmable electronic computers didn't come along until the mid 1900s.

Though it obviously depends a bit on what you are willing to count as computer, or as code.

[hackermailman]

We all know why the Lovelace myth still persists http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/babbage/ada.html "It is often suggested that Ada was the world's first programmer. This is nonsense: Babbage was, if programmer is the right term. After Babbage came a mathematical assistant of his, Babbage's eldest son, Herschel, and possibly Babbage's two younger sons. Ada was probably the fourth, fifth or six person to write the programmes. Moreover all she did was rework some calculations Babbage had carried out years earlier. Ada's calculations were student exercises. Ada Lovelace figures in the history of the Calculating Engines as Babbage's interpretress"

[consteval]

Can't we let women have this one thing? Like... just this one thing? It's fine. Who knows, a lot of time has passed and I'm sure there's many people who "programmed" and never told anyone.

It's fine, let Ada have this. It's dead anyway and we clearly don't have nearly enough women in Computer Science so we can let this one go. We already have 99% of all stuff, we shouldn't get greedy.

[icambron]

Instead of patronizingly giving women a false hero, instead introduce them to a real one: Klara Von Neumann (yes, that Von Neumann) who was the first coder for what we might recognize as a digital computer in the modern sense. She had to pioneer a lot of stuff!

[poiuyt098]

that's extremely patronizing to women

[consteval]

Says who? You, all women?

Ada Lovelace is a real person. What's patronizing about it? We didn't make her up out of pity for women.