Ada Lovelace short film for kids

BrainPOP, makers of short educational animations, created this short film based on the life of Ada Lovelace, inventor of computer programming, daughter of Lord Byron, partner-in-crime of Charles Babbage, and horse-fancier.

BrainPOP | Ada Lovelace (Thanks, Karina!)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

This has nothing on “Ada Lovelace, The ORIGIN!” by Sydney Padua: http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/lovelace-the-origin-2/
- Matthew Miller
  
  Thanks, Anon #1 â€” that’s completely awesome. The little part about twitter made me actually LOL.
  - peterbruells
    
    I find it interesting how long it takes to convey roughly the same amount of information in the movie compared to the comic.
    
    I know that this is a kind of unfair comparison, since the film is aimed at kids, but I don’t think that there’s enough filler in it which could be cut to speed it up much.
wylkyn

I was eager after reading the headline, but then disappointed. The animation was actually rather boring for a kid’s educational piece. I liked it because the story was fascinating despite its dry presentation, but I don’t imagine too many kids would make it through the whole thing with any real information stuck in their brains. It takes more than an animated lecture to engage young minds, and the occasional antics of the robot (probably inserted for juvenile appeal) simply distracted from the subject. I don’t know if anything is known about Ada’s personal feelings, but even a guess at her motivations would be more engaging than this dry recitation of the events of her life. Just my opinion, however. I’m always on the lookout for stories of female scientists for my daughter. This one would lose her completely.
lyceum

Ada’s nice, but honestly… the inventors of the first *actual* programming languages (COBOL and FORTRAN), and the first real programmers (ENIAC) were almost all women. Why don’t we ever hear about them? Or Joyce Reynolds who wrote telnet, or Amy Perl who ran the group that made java, or Mary Lou Jepson who was the technical force behind one laptop per child, etc…? Grace Hopper invented the compiler, which made programming as we know it possible. With all the focus on Ada, people get the impression that she was the most significant woman in computer science. Actually, the gender gap isn’t that bad among the best and brightest of the field… women just don’t tend to work IT ;-)

Here’s a list of a few dozen more:
http://lyceum-arabica.livejournal.com/167497.html#cutid1
lyceum

Amy Pearl, sorry.
Perl’s a good language, but as it was invented by Larry Wall, it’s not eligible for this list. :-)

However, a competitor, Ruby, was partly based on the fundamental ground-breaking work of Turing Award winner Barabra Liskov.
wizardofplum

‘Scuse me , is the the sister of Linda?
Anonymous

this is really helpful thank you