All the way back in 1842 an individual created an appended set of notes that included a detailed method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with Charles Babbage's Analytical Machine when translating a memoir of that device by Italian mathmatician Luigi Menabrea. For this reason, the individual became later known as the first computer programmer. Granted, this isn't exactly an accurate title for the person, but as they are recognized for creating the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine, it is applicable enough and sounds much better than "Babbage Machiner".
This person was Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. Nowadays, she's almost always referred to as Ada Lovelace. Today, March 24th, is celebrated as Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. I joined in with blogging about the topic last year when I posted about the topic over at CSSquirrel, sharing the existence of the women who work at Mindfly Web Design Studio.
Conversations about gender representation issues in tech companies often float past without my awareness. This is because at Mindfly, women represent 60% of our talent. I suppose I'm fortunate that I can take their presence in the workplace for granted, but I know I shouldn't. Despite how much we congratulate ourselves on the progress of the 21st century, I'm informed that situations like Mindfly are the rarity. I'm not entirely sure if efforts such as the new Barbie doll being a computer engineer is "progress" in that regards, frankly. While we're at it, I'm pretty sure most computer engineers aren't as color blind as she apparently is with that outfit.
The moral of the story is that if you are a woman in the tech industry, or know one, perhaps you should pause and take a moment to blog just a little bit about that. Doing so will help provide examples for girls to look towards when considering their own future. Then perhaps, some day, there can be more places like Mindfly.
In addition to all the awesome ladies that I shared with you in my previous posts, this Ada Lovelace Day there's an additional woman on the Mindfly team. Here's Erica, one of our designers. (Who rocks.)
