Who Is the World's First Computer Programmer? [Juhyung Lim's Tech Talk]

English poet Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace
Dedicated to math and science education under mother's guidance from an early age
Studied the first mechanical calculator 'Difference Engine'
Invented the world's first software 'instructions' and published a paper
Accurately predicted the appearance of computers 160 years later

Portrait of Ada Lovelace painted by Swiss artist Alfred Edward in 1840. / Photo by Wikipedia capture

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Ju-hyung] The world's first computer was the British 'Colossus,' created in 1943. It was designed to decipher Nazi Germany's codes during World War II. However, no matter how powerful a computer is, without a program to issue commands, it is merely a large machine. The Colossus also operated through a special program capable of decoding signals from German cipher teleprinters.

So, who was the world's first computer programmer? Who first conceived the concept of a computer program?

Amazingly, the first computer programmer was created a full 128 years before the first computer. She was Ada Lovelace, a mathematician born on December 10, 1815, in London, England.

Ada was born the daughter of George Gordon Byron, Baron Byron, a genius Romantic poet revered in England. However, her childhood was far from smooth. Byron had hoped his wife, Anne Isabella, would bear a son to inherit his title, but when a daughter was born, he expressed great disappointment. One year after Ada's birth, in 1816, Byron informed Isabella of his intention to divorce and sent her and their daughter back to her family home.

Deeply distressed, Isabella feared that Ada might inherit Byron's 'poetic temperament.' Therefore, she taught young Ada mathematics and science, which led Ada to grow into a woman deeply versed in mathematics.

Ada's interest in computers began on June 5, 1833, when she met mathematician and mechanical engineer Charles Babbage. At that time, Babbage was developing a mechanical calculator called the 'Difference Engine,' designed to automatically compute polynomial functions.

The difference engine installed at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, USA. / Photo by Wikipedia capture

In the 19th century, there were no machines to perform complex calculations. Therefore, people called 'computers' performed calculations by hand, which often led to numerous errors and headaches. Babbage aimed to eliminate 'human errors' in mathematical research through a mechanical device capable of automatically calculating multiple numbers.

The Difference Engine was a mechanical device from an era before electricity was widespread. Instead, a person manually turned a handle, causing countless gears and cogs inside the machine to rotate and print the calculation results. Data storage was replaced by small paper cards called 'punched cards.' These cards had holes punched in specific locations, and the presence or absence of these holes functioned like the 0s and 1s?bits?of modern computers.

Ada collaborated with Babbage on the design and operation of the Difference Engine. Notably, Ada could infer how the machine operated just by looking at its blueprints and developed examples of 'instructions' that allowed the machine to calculate specific formulas. These instructions were published in 1843 in the renowned British journal Scientific Memoirs.

The world's first computer algorithm devised by Ada herself. / Photo by Wikipedia capture

The instructions Ada created were the world's first algorithm, in other words, software. This is why Ada Lovelace is considered the world's first programmer. Additionally, Ada was the first to conceive essential programming control structures such as loops, conditionals, and subroutines used in today's programming languages.

But that's not all. In the same year, in her explanatory notes on the Difference Engine, Ada stated that "if the Difference Engine were to be greatly improved, it could play music, generate complex images, or be used in science." This was a prediction of the birth of computers about 160 years in advance.

However, Ada never saw the Difference Engine she devoted her knowledge and passion to actually operate. Frail from a young age, she died of uterine cancer at her London home on November 27, 1852, at the young age of 36.

Research on the Difference Engine continued afterward but was never realized. Five years after Ada's death, in 1855, several Difference Engines influenced by Babbage's designs were built, but due to the limitations of mechanical engineering at the time, they were closer to simple printers than complex calculators.

The real Difference Engine was built more than a century after Ada's death, in 1991. The London Science Museum, commemorating the 200th anniversary of Babbage's birth, faithfully followed his original design to build the Difference Engine No. 2, which successfully operated.

Although Ada's achievement of implementing the world's first computer programming was rendered futile by the limitations of her era, her legacy permeates the global computer engineering community to this day.

For example, the computer language 'Ada,' developed by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1977, was named after Ada Lovelace. Ada is still used in various fields, including software for U.S. Air Force fighter jets.

In 2013, the 'Ada Developer Academy' was established in Seattle, USA, to educate women in computer programming and nurture future software developers. The Ada Academy supports programming education for hundreds of women annually and connects them to high-paying computer engineering jobs.