- as the title indicates, women have been there since the dawn of computing
- computer referred to a person that did calculations, and it was usually a woman.
- is sitting on your ass on a comfortable chair in front of a computer instead of running around caving in skulls really masculine or feminine?
Ada Lovelace
Submitted 4 days ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/d868a7bf-5f1e-4b7b-a7ef-0991197efd56.jpeg
Comments
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 4 days ago
xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
IIRC back when “computer” is a person rather than an object, it was a woman’s job.
hexabs@lemmy.world 3 days ago
So it was always an object?
python@lemmy.world 3 days ago
it was OOP even back then
Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
The origins of computer programming are also intertwined with textiles, as the first punch card programs emerged as part of weaving in the early 1800s (Jacquard looms).
Also interesting: trans people in addition to cis women are historically associated with textile production in many cultures. Trans programmer socks = modern day trans weaver.
Akasazh@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Lovelace
On the subject of lace, making it is very intricate and quite mathematical too
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 4 days ago
I can’t help but feel that we aren’t even close to matching the intelligence of women.
mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Well obviously for you if username checks out…
applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
whats really funny to me is people make this claim, but any good study that looks for differences finds none or that women are very slightly better at math and spatial reasoning
Azzu@leminal.space 4 days ago
Wait you’re telling me that women are better? So that differences between the sexes exist?
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
No, the point is that there isn’t, and experiments that do show a slight difference are probably due to experimental error, biases, sampling differences, etc.
Simply being either a man or woman does not make you better than another.
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 4 days ago
Hooray for the Lady who might have written the first algorithm! She needs more attention.
Other: Charles Babbage (sp?) and the Analytic Engine: perhaps our first real computer. Imagine a steampunk world where all our devices were powered by huge mechanical chunks and chonks.
I saw a video of a constructed Analytical Engine (they couldn’t manufacture the parts to the specs required in Babbage’s time) donated to a Computer History museum by an early Microsoft exec. Didn’t find it on a quick search, but it’s a huge thing driven by a physical crank.
call_me_xale@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
This woman wrote computer programs before computers existed. Fucking mind-blowing.
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 3 days ago
I can’t imagine a more advanced mind. I mean, maybe Einstein, but we have proof of her discoveries and they’re not at all abstract in the contemporary world! (I mean, they kinda are, but you get what I mean.)
cockmushroom@reddthat.com 3 days ago
Turns out she even caught the world’s first bug and wrote its second en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note_G?wprov=sfla1
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 4 days ago
honestly, drawing patterns only uses “calculus” and “trig” because those are the arbitrary names given to the thought processes that blend the proper melding of mind to motion
sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Isn’t that also true of the word “mathematics” as well?
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 3 days ago
yep
Zerush@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Whenever I hear someone slopping that “adage” out, I silently note that they’ve no idea how many of the Apollo astronauts returned home safely. (It rhymes with “female mathematicians”, btw.)
glimse@lemmy.world 4 days ago
(It rhymes with “female mathematicians”, btw.)
…The male mathematicians? Retail statisticians?? Detailed staff positions???
kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
All of them, the answer is all of them. Follow me for more English hacks!
Kolanaki@pawb.social 4 days ago
Been seeing these shorts of a dude who does tie dye shirts, but he does hella math to know how fold the fabric up and get gnarly geometric shapes and mandalas. It’s like damascus steel, but with trippy colors.
fiveze@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I wonder if this is what they were referencing: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-level_task “…the finding that men perform [the water-level task] at a higher level has been robustly confirmed.”
HereIAm@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I assume for the college level students it’s who can mark the level of the water most accurately? I certainly hope all of them would at least mark the water line horizontal to the ground
burlemarx@lemmygrad.ml 3 days ago
I love these pseudo intelectual arguments that try to explain human behavior. It’s a fact that there are biological differences between men and women, that is obvious. But people love to pull sophisticated pseudo scientific arguments that rest in very weak premises, which often ignore the many other factors (for example social and political) that also influence the outcome this argument is trying to explain.
So, this women are bad at spatial awareness so they are bad at math. How do we objectively validate the premise in the first place, without taking into account biases that can influence that very premise, like social, nutritional and political factors? Are math skills only influenced by spatial awareness or are there other factors that influence math skills?
So this argument is actually a subjective prejudice but worded in a way that seems to be scientifically valid. One consequence of the enlightenment is that we started to try all the time to disguise a subjective prejudice with an objective truth. After that we had eugenics, (pseudo-) scientific race theory and all kinds bad justifications, but the truth is that people want to exploit other people, and they think that coming up with moral and scientific explanations for this exploitation makes them sleep better after making numerous atrocities during the day.
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 4 days ago
The intent of the post, sure. Women and men are equally capable of anything.
But absolutely nobody creating sewing patterns is sitting down and going “alright the integral of e to the x dx is…” Or remembering their laplace transformations.
Melobol@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
I love over-complicating things… but Calculus in a sewing pattern sounds really strange.
Unless… it is like for a space suit where you need to be accurate? Or making something for a form fitting hard surface?
Wren@lemmy.today 4 days ago
Quilters would like a word.
Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Only if you want clothes that fit
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
I imagine people are using the calculus to analyze knitting patterns and stuff. Not the knitters themselves.
Fondots@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Fun fact, the space suits used in the Apollo program were made by Playtex
DeadDigger@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Well there is a lot of calculus involved in making patterns like body ratios or wool to knot ratios if you put knitting into sewing.
pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
I’m not saying I couldn’t see cases where I would seriously consider using calculus in a sewing pattern, but it’s really not used in sewing pattern creation basically ever unless someone already knows it and had a very specific use case. I suspect the OP meant “calculations” or something similar and mis-typed.
Source: I still remember a fair amount of calculus and I sew
Seleni@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Of course they don’t mean women pull out a calculator, a notebook, and start doing calculations, anymore than when a person throws a ball at a target they pull out some graph paper and start calculating parabolic arcs and all that shit. They’re saying we do it instinctively, and if we’re good at doing it instinctively then we can do it intellectually.
Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 3 days ago
Do you think “mental calculus” means people are doing derivatives in their heads?
It doesn’t. It’s also not what was meant by the author of this post when they used the word.