In Ada&#x27;s case I demand she deserves more credit.<p>GP is right to insist she did not invent the 1st programmable computer, Baggage did, yet I argue she wrote the 1st program.<p>Historian&#x27;s rightly test the hypothesis of Lovelace&#x27;s primacy in our field. I show she was the both the 1st to publish and contend her overall vision was greater than her contempories.<p>Babbage&#x27;s, never built, Analytical Engine was programmable with punch cards and Ada published a program to compute Bernoulli numbers - it is uncontested this is the 1st published program for the Analytical Engine.<p>Some have argued, by analysing her other correspondences that she had not the wit to conceive such a program and only transcribed. I argue this is both mean spirited and so uncertain as to be unsound.<p>Uncertain because her other correspondence must have reflected contempory mores. Both the egos involved &amp; the strict gender expectations of the time, that for &#x27;health reasons&#x27; a &#x27;too clever&#x27; woman should face censorship. Further she must have used every means at her disposal, charm as well as ability, to win such prestigious position.<p>Unproven because she certainly was well versed in Mathematics, her mother ensured she was mathematically educated, so she certainly understood Bernoulli numbers.<p>Her greater achievement, IMHO, was to envision the porention of the Analytical Engine. Babbage&#x27;s Analytical Engine was devised, capable of computing different tables,  programmable with other arithmetics, tides, artillery.<p>Ada saw beyond mere arithmetic to all numbers could represent: algebra (&amp; thus meta-programming) and t
he imaginative arts. She envisioned the engine computing music, poetry and pictures, which implies creativity &amp; thought , proto-A.I in idea. This extraoridinarily prescient vision is quoted by Turing himself as a direct inspiration.<p>Perhaps Babbage speculated we have no record; Lovelace published and that&#x27;s what counts.<p>Her actual words leave (me) little doubt she grokked computation is kin to cognition. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nlcatp.org&#x2F;30-incredible-ada-lovelace-quotes&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nlcatp.org&#x2F;30-incredible-ada-lovelace-quotes&#x2F;</a>