Ada Lovelace, born in 1815, is often called the first computer programmer—despite the fact that actual computers didn’t exist yet. She was the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron, but it was her interest in math and logic (influenced by her mother) that shaped her path.

Her main contribution came from working with Charles Babbage, who designed the Analytical Engine—a mechanical computer that was never fully built. Ada translated an article about the machine and added her own detailed notes, which ended up being more insightful than the original piece. In those notes, she included an algorithm meant to run on the machine, making it the first published computer program in history.

But what really makes Ada stand out is that she saw beyond number-crunching. She imagined that a machine like the Analytical Engine could handle things like music or symbols—not just math. That kind of thinking was way ahead of her time.

In short, Ada Lovelace laid down some of the earliest ideas behind programming, nearly a century before modern computers showed up. Her work helped shape how we think about machines and code today.