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Even by 1800s standards, Ada Byron Lovelace had an unusual upbringing. Her strict mother worked hard at cultivating her own role as the long-suffering ex-wife of bad-boy poet Lord Byron while raising Ada in isolation. Tutored by the brightest minds, Ada developed a hunger for mental puzzles, mathematical conundrums, and scientific discovery that kept pace with the breathtaking advances of the industrial and social revolutions taking place in Europe. At seventeen, Ada met eccentric inventor Charles Babbage, a kindred spirit. Their ensuing collaborations resulted in ideas and concepts that presaged computer programming by almost two hundred years, and Ada Lovelace is now recognized as a pioneer and prophet of the information age. Award-winning author Emily Arnold McCully opens the window on a peculiar and singular intellect, shaped -- and hampered -- by history, social norms, and family dysfunction. The result is a portrait that is at once remarkable and fascinating, tragic and triumphant.
(176 pages)
As a girl studying computer science, I have become more and more aware of Ada Lovelace's name over the past few years. Going into Dreaming in Code, I knew that she was considered one of the forebears of computer science, and that she had worked alongside a man named Charles Babbage to develop an early prototype.
Those facts, I've found, are only partially right. I have to admit that I'm not as impressed with her as I hoped I'd be. Ada Lovelace was a very intelligent woman, with a passion for math and engineering, who basically kept up a correspondence with Babbage while he was working on his inventions. She was remarkable in her ability to comprehend the complex working of his machines and his ideas, in a time when almost no one else did, but the only real advancement that she herself ever really made in the field was her series of observations about Babbage's machines in the end notes of a translation she did of L. F. Menabrea's "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage." It's pretty cool to read the very first algorithm, in Note G, and to see her use the concepts of looping and branching that we still use all the time in programming today. But other than that, and an assertion that computers can only ever do what we already know how to program them how to do (something which has been contested since Alan Turing, and which machine learning has certainly destroyed), she really didn't do much else for computing.
I hate to say it, because I loved the idea of learning about this kick-butt woman defying all the odds to become the mother of computing, but it sounds like Babbage was actually much more dedicated, productive, and, frankly, important to the history of computing. Lovelace got obsessed with Babbage's work and was a good sounding board for him, and she certainly made some important leaps of logic that he might not have been able to find, but I don't really see why her work is considered so pivotal. If she hadn't been involved, it sounds like computers still would have developed just fine.
Anyway, I'm sorry I come across so negative in this review. I'm just disappointed that the famed Ada Lovelace I've heard so much about didn't quite live up to the hype. But anyway, I did really like this book which took a practical, chronological approach to describing her life. I recommend it for anyone interested in her work, though I do have to warn you that it may not be suitable for children. There are quite a few references to infidelity, both on the part of Ada's father, Lord Byron (quite egregiously) and, to a much lesser extent, Ada herself. There is also a mention of the rumors that Byron fathered a girl with his own half-sister, which is just so yuck. Also, this isn't so inappropriate but still very frustrating, her mother was a completely narcissistic controlling monster who didn't even tell Ada that her father was Lord Byron until she was an adult. So there's that.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
As a girl studying computer science, I have become more and more aware of Ada Lovelace's name over the past few years. Going into Dreaming in Code, I knew that she was considered one of the forebears of computer science, and that she had worked alongside a man named Charles Babbage to develop an early prototype.
Those facts, I've found, are only partially right. I have to admit that I'm not as impressed with her as I hoped I'd be. Ada Lovelace was a very intelligent woman, with a passion for math and engineering, who basically kept up a correspondence with Babbage while he was working on his inventions. She was remarkable in her ability to comprehend the complex working of his machines and his ideas, in a time when almost no one else did, but the only real advancement that she herself ever really made in the field was her series of observations about Babbage's machines in the end notes of a translation she did of L. F. Menabrea's "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage." It's pretty cool to read the very first algorithm, in Note G, and to see her use the concepts of looping and branching that we still use all the time in programming today. But other than that, and an assertion that computers can only ever do what we already know how to program them how to do (something which has been contested since Alan Turing, and which machine learning has certainly destroyed), she really didn't do much else for computing.
I hate to say it, because I loved the idea of learning about this kick-butt woman defying all the odds to become the mother of computing, but it sounds like Babbage was actually much more dedicated, productive, and, frankly, important to the history of computing. Lovelace got obsessed with Babbage's work and was a good sounding board for him, and she certainly made some important leaps of logic that he might not have been able to find, but I don't really see why her work is considered so pivotal. If she hadn't been involved, it sounds like computers still would have developed just fine.
Anyway, I'm sorry I come across so negative in this review. I'm just disappointed that the famed Ada Lovelace I've heard so much about didn't quite live up to the hype. But anyway, I did really like this book which took a practical, chronological approach to describing her life. I recommend it for anyone interested in her work, though I do have to warn you that it may not be suitable for children. There are quite a few references to infidelity, both on the part of Ada's father, Lord Byron (quite egregiously) and, to a much lesser extent, Ada herself. There is also a mention of the rumors that Byron fathered a girl with his own half-sister, which is just so yuck. Also, this isn't so inappropriate but still very frustrating, her mother was a completely narcissistic controlling monster who didn't even tell Ada that her father was Lord Byron until she was an adult. So there's that.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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