Programmers in the 1800s? Women programmers in the 1800s? Yep. Check out the "Who was Ada" article on findingada.com. Ada's mother (her mother? That's also cool) taught her math when she was quite young. She met Charles Babbage in the 1830's.  Babbage had been working on an analytical machine which was quite different than Turing's machine. Either way, with Babbage she was writing programs.

In honor of Ada, bloggers around the world are called upon today to blog about a woman in IT who has inspired them. There are quite a few on my list, but I would like to call out Kate Gregory, from outside of Toronto, Ontario (Canada), who seems to excel at everything she does. Whether it is dissecting C++ , writing or teaching about programming, being a mom or running a successful software consulting business with her husband, she does it beautifully. Kate is one of the few truly wise (ala King Solomon) people I have ever met and I have been grateful for her willingness to share her wisdom with me.