Ada Lovelace – ‘the most overrated figure in the history of computing’

Our thanks to Milo Yiannopoulos for linking on Twitter to an article by Emma Duncan in Intelligent Life, published by the Economisthere. Milo tweeted:

The real Ada Lovelace, shorn of feminist mythologising – fascinating stuff.

An extract, from near the end of the article:

Doubts about the extent of her contribution along with Ada’s celebrity status have led to claims that she has been over-promoted. “She was”, wrote Bruce Collier, one of Babbage’s biographers, “a manic-depressive with the most amazing delusions about her own talents, and a rather shallow understanding of both Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine… I guess someone has to be the most overrated figure in the history of computing.”

But the world will continue to give Ada the benefit of the doubt – because it needs her. Computing is short of female heroines, and historical role models demonstrate that even in the days when it was hard for clever women to use their brains to great effect, there were female scientists passionate enough to overcome the barriers society placed in their way.

Could it be any clearer? The ‘world’ – for which, read feminists – ‘needs’ to make a heroine of Ada Lovelace and others who contributed little, by relentlessly lying about their contributions, and downplaying men’s contributions.

The same could, of course, be said for most of the women about whom feminists lie, including Rosalind Franklin, who worked on the structure of DNA before Crick and Watson cracked the code. William Collins’s piece on Ms Franklin is here.

3 thoughts on “Ada Lovelace – ‘the most overrated figure in the history of computing’

  1. ‘ … historical role models demonstrate that even in the days when it was hard for clever women to use their brains to great effect … ‘

    Perhaps those women were not quite as clever as they thought themselves.

    More seriously, what good can possibly come from basing ‘role models’ on lies?

  2. For me as a computer scientist it is just funny that one of the most “wordy” and complex computer languages was named after her. Suffice to say that there is very little practical applications for such a language. The most used languages tend to be the ones with a very limited vocabulary, such as C++ and Javascript. As Ada is based on Pascal there is an awful lot of typing involved; maybe she was a strong typist?

  3. I have a degree in computer science and 25+ years of experience. My work has taken me from Canada to East Africa and back. Today, thanks to affirmative action, I see women with no educational background or experience in IT being parachuted into IT management positions in government (where there is no accountability), and it’s absolutely sickening how incompetent these people really are. Absolutely talent-less hacks – the whole lot of them. Thanks a lot feminism!

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