Ada and linus

Recently, I was working on a project which involved reporting on a major historical figure. Naturally, I took it as an opportunity to research two figures who I had always been intrigued by; Ada Lovelace and Linus Torvalds.

Let me start by saying, they are absolute f**king legends. Both started out their interests in their early years, and their contribution to the field of computer science is unparalleled by only a few.

Linus’s inventions; Linux and git, are the backbone of many technology systems today. The Linux kernel is utilized in various mission-critical fields: from government infrastructures to military and defense systems, banking institutions to air traffic control, enterprise-grade systems and more. While git is the standard version control system for 95% of software projects in the industry today. For his contributions to the field he has been awarded the; Millennium Technology Prize, IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award and IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award.

Ada, a protege in her own right, was a pioneer ahead of her time. Being dubbed as the “first programmer” and “mother of computer programming”, she showed a keen understanding of technical systems at a young age and appplied this skills in her later years under the tutaleage of the great Charles Babbage. She also helped contribite to the design of Babbage’s analytical engine, by recognizing the correlation between the inner workings of the jacquard loom and how it could be applied to improve that of the engine. However, her 1843 revision of a transcript written by Luigi Menabrae on a seminar on charles babbage’s analytical engine was by far her most notable contribution to the field of computer science. In this revision, she wrote what could be described today as, “the first computer program”; an algorithm for calculating a sequence of Bernouilli numbers using the analytical engine. In 1987, a programming language commisioned by the United States(U.S.) defense was named after her, and it is still used in numerous fields today, especially avionics.

Apart from both their obvious genius, their motivations for their contributions were vastly different. Ada was a visionary who had ideas of advancing the field of computer science. She took inspirations from various fields in her attempts to achieve this goal. On the other hand, Linus never had the intention of world transformation with the projects he created. Famously stating that he “was not a visionary”, and that he only created projects that he felt he needed for himself. In the case of the Linux kernel; it was built as an alternative to the inflexible and troublesome Unix kernel, while Git was built as a necessary maintatiner for his first project: Linux.

These two, though; centuries apart; of different gender and nationality; different environment and status, have what I believe is an essential trait every programmer should strive to emulate, and that is, a predisposition towards innovation.