Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

[Anonymously Famous]

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

According to the above-mentioned Wiki article, Ada Lovelace is considered by some to be the world's first computer programmer, as she wrote "the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine." And for some reason, today is a day that we celebrate her. Huzzah!

[Jplus]

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

What kind of things are we supposed to do on this day? Write programs?

[Anonymously Famous]

I do not know. My wife passed it on to me, and I decided to pass it on here. Feel free to celebrate however you see fit.

[Yakk]

"So share your story about a woman — whether an engineer, a scientist, a technologist or mathematician — who has inspired you to become who you are today."

[freakish777]

Write programs?

Small minds write programs.
Average minds author algorithms and platforms.
Great minds create languages.


Sorry! Couldn't resist twisting Eleanor Roosevelt's quote.

[Great Justice]

Small minds write programs.
Average minds author algorithms and platforms.
Great minds create languages.

Programs are a means to an end: they implement algorithms, but a language is a means to an end too... it lets you write programs.

[freakish777]

Programs are a means to an end: they implement algorithms, but a language is a means to an end too... it lets you write programs.

Of course, but there is a different between implementing and authoring an algorithm.

Essentially, anyone can do some googling and write a program.
Not just anyone can come up with an algorithm to solve a problem in a unique and useful fashion (more efficient in some situations than previously existing solutions).

[korona]

Designing a language is a much easier task than designing an efficient algorithm.

[freakish777]

Designing a language is a much easier task than designing an efficient algorithm.

Sure.

Designing a language to solve a problem in a unique and useful fashion (more efficient in some situations than previously existing solutions) is a different story though (such as C being created with the intent of writing the Unix OS with it).

[Yakk]

A quicksort with a slightly different pivot choice is a "new algorithm" as much as a language with nothing novel is a "new language".

Languages are so hard that nearly all of them are copy-pasta off other already implemented languages, with a mix their features and "features". Algorithms in comparison are so easy, that people actually write new ones (or come up with them and reinvent the horse without knowing of the old one).

[korona]

On the other hand there are languages for almost all purposes, but there are no efficient algorithms for many real-world problems. There are many (practically important!) problems in P or probably in P for which we did not find satisfying algorithms yet. There are even more problems in NP that we translate to SAT or IP in order to solve them because there are no known algorithms better than exhaustive search.

EDIT: Designing efficient algorithms requires much knowledge in mathematics and hardware architecture (cache behavior etc.).
Anyone with a little knowledge of assembly can invent a compiler/language. It takes time and a compiler is a complex project but it is not a _hard_ problem.

[Oktalist]

Lady Lovelace is also the first recorded person to have pointed out that computers could be used for things other than solving mathematical problems. That for example, the numbers that a computer works with could be used to represent text, musical notes, or whatever.