Computers have one feature in common from the first engines of computation to the most modern quantum models: they’re all built to permit customization to task. Computers are programmable–either in hardware or software–and this is what makes them the versatile central technology of computation that makes them the “brain.” As a result, computers science and engineering collapses into the art of programming and the craft of the developer. Today is Ada Lovelace day and she is widely, and proudly, pronounced as the first programmer.

Her instrumental connection to Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine begins a proud legacy for developers that can be seen in every line of code.

Google

Last year, Google celebrated the December birthday of  Ada Lovelace via a beautifully done doodle; and this year Google is celebrating her holiday Google Education has published a Google+ note looking for stories about #STEM scientists; Google proper ran a video about MAKERS at Google: Women in Technology; and Google Developers displayed a presentation from Google Developers Life called GDL Presents Techmakers with Trisha Gee.

Don’t miss out

Ada Lovelace Day is a national “holiday” of sorts for the tech industry that helps increase the basic knowledge of what makes developers, engineers, and computer science tick by raising awareness of women in that field. Right now, a great deal of people who have been part of and fundamental to the progress of computer science have been lost to history and its time to connect them once again.

Finding Ada is a starting point to learn not just more about Ada Lovelace, but the very people who make technology possible. This project and all its incumbent accoutrements could make your week not just interesting but fulfilling and educational. If you want to take part, check out what’s going on during to Ada Lovelace Day.

And, furthermore, if you happen to be a fan of a woman in science and have a silver keyboard (or just an interest) you could join in on an edit-a-thon to add more biographies and subjects to Wikipedia about women in technology. Just like Ada Lovelace there’s a vast tapestry of people who have helped forge every element of everything we do–innovators, thinkers, tinkerers, and inventors.

Programming

Programmers and developers have been relegated to a status as a part of the service industry. We build the things that make the world run–from the scripting that makes car engines function, UIs for kiosks and houses, web pages that provide businesses a way to present their best (and worst) faces to the world. Developers are behind the technology that underpins social media from Twitter and Facebook, changes lives with anonymity networks such as Tor, or change the nature of money with Bitcoin.

We are embedded in the arts with video games in ways that may have never been imagined when Ada Lovelace first programmed the Bernoulli Sequence into the Analytical Engine. Even now programmers can look forward to coding for networks that collect data from thousands of sources in the Internet of Things, collecting information and analysing it to give rise to patterns and notions that only ten years ago couldn’t have been understood with Big Data.

That’s the developments of just one decade.

Developers exist on the forefront of technology that permeates everyday life across the first world and has deep impact even into less technologically developed countries.

Developers code for a technological culture that can change the world and that world includes women.

Computer science has a legacy and a future that is worth documenting, remembering, and educating ourselves about.