• houstoneulers@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      I also looked this up and many sources are giving credit to a guy named Charles Babbage. But perhaps this meme creator is defining computer differently.

      • Tamo240@programming.dev
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        9 hours ago

        Babbage is the creator of the first mechanical Computer (his Difference Engine).

        Turing is the father of Computer Science, in that he created a mathematical model for computation (Turing Machines).

        • 𝕛𝕨𝕞-𝕕𝕖𝕧@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 hours ago

          even then the degree to which charles babbage was responsible for his machines is somewhat contested.

          even then charles babbage was inventing in an environment that was already highly geared to explore logic as a discipline with many people actively pursuing the same or similar objects of fascination. there are experiments in computation and entire computers far preceding babbage, going so far back as the earliest annals of recorded history.

          a lot of people also don’t understand that babbage’s initial inventions weren’t even autonomous or mechanical/electrical. they weren’t computers in the colloquial, modern sense. at first they were basically just arrays of literal physical drawers, that the user had to physically move objects between, that could represent something akin to modern memory. this was rudimentary even at the time - the classical greeks famously were astute mechanist and the best of the wondermakers could make much more than just cranes: think autonomous robots, analog computational orreries, literal fucking lasers powered by the sun. by babbage’s time europeans were intimately familiar with engineering and computational principles far beyond what the average contemporary person realizes. the actual innovation is the conceptual handling of it. without that, babbage just made a fancy shelf.

          either way babbage isn’t even remembered very fondly by the field. lovelace was far more influential and had far more intuition and genius to her work.

    • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      17 hours ago

      A German guy called Konrad Zuse also invented computers around the same time. I honestly never wondered about his relation to the Nazis. I’ve just looked it up and he never was a party member, yet he worked for the military. Yikes.

  • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Being gay didn’t contribute to his death. How the state treated him when they found out did. Anytime his name comes up I think about how many horrible people there are in the world who just can’t let others be what they are . Fanatics are somewhat evil by nature.

  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    He ended WW2 at least half a year earlier than it would have.

    He saved hundreds of thousands of lives, maybe millions.

    Then he returned home to England as a war hero, but was instead exiled and chemically castrated for being a homosexual.

    Not much later he committed suicide.

    It was Alan that first opened my eyes as a child to the senseless violence committed against LGBTQIA+

    Every June 23rd I make sure to remember him and all he has done for humanity.

    Rip Alan Turing, the father of computer science, i love you.

  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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    23 hours ago

    I named* my first self-built computer after him! Does this make that machine gay? They put chemicals in the bytes that turn the friggin’ hardware gay!

    *call me a weirdo but I do often name stuff like household appliances and my trees.

    • lime!@feddit.nu
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      18 hours ago

      ironically they also put chemicals in alan that were supposed to turn him not gay

    • Dicska@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      My friend’s mom occasionally gives full names, like forename+surname and uses them as such

      • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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        15 hours ago

        I don’t go so far. Only my pets get a surname, and it’s the family’s surname. (Some of the household appliances have kind of melodramatic names though, specially if they break often. Like Solineuza, the washing machine.)

      • TeddE@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        Technically true, but as an admin with root priviledges, I can access system private keys and directly manage it’s identity, such that it’s choice is usually what I told it to want.

        Tangent, boy I cannot wait for neurolink to let Grok in my brain. I’m sure it will lead to lots of new ways of thinking for me. 🙃😶😶🙄

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Konrad Zuse invented the first proper computer.

    Alan Turing later invented computing.

    This distinction is why computer science exists.

    • wewbull@feddit.uk
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      23 hours ago

      Turing theories and papers were pre-war. It’s those that people remember him for.

  • Fossifoo [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    23 hours ago

    Not only was he gay but also convicted for it by the UK, denied entry into the US, put on chemical castration and there’s a good chance he committed suicide over it. So, yeah.

  • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Alan Turing, the father of modern computers, has an incredibly depressing ending.

    Chemically castrated due to being an illegal homosexual, he died in dishonor over bullshit homophobia and new drugs that the 1950s possessed.

    • RedSnt 👓♂️🖥️@feddit.dk
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      1 day ago

      And it wasn’t until late 2013 that he was pardoned for the crime of “being gay”, and ironically TERF island has only gotten worse since then.

        • RedSnt 👓♂️🖥️@feddit.dk
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          1 day ago

          i find it hard to say terf island has gotten worse since the 1950s.

          I meant since 2013, because yeah, it did get better for a little while. And now they’re policing the bathrooms.

          • Taalnazi@lemmy.world
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            24 hours ago

            I sometimes still wonder why it got worse after. I think it’s got to do with Putin invading Ukraine’s Crimea and concurrently, spreading disinformation in the UK and US, causing Trump to win, and Trump in turn spreading even more hatred…

            But that they could win was also reinforced by long standing social issues; the lack of proper and affordable housing, free healthcare, (and later, enormous inflation) for one!

            In times like these, oligarchs try their hardest to indoctrinate the populace that playing out against each other is preferable as otherwise, groups they dislike get rights.

            When these marginalised groups don’t get into the news much nor that negatively (but do get support from politicians), and the socioeconomic circumstances are good for the bourgeoise (and the proletariat too), I think it would be much better.

            • redchert@lemmygrad.ml
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              17 hours ago

              I sometimes still wonder why it got worse after.

              UK was always TERFs headquarters due to previous-waves feminism being more successful (Thatcher was one of the first female head of states in the west), so cis british women assimilated into the power structure more.

      • kautau@lemmy.world
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        Every UNIX socks post is in memory of Turing. If you don’t agree you’re gay. And if you do agree you’re gay too. Computers are gay and by using one, you’re gay. Jokes on you, by reading this, you’re using a computer. You’re gay. That’s the actual Turing test

        • Match!!@pawb.social
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          1 day ago

          turing completemess refers to the idea that any computational system capable of universal data manipulation is completely gay

  • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Alan Turing, the inventor of the first computer*, was castrated by the British Government for being gay.

    FTFY

    *Not exactly, but not to diminish his immense contributions to computer science

    • Adalast@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Thank you. That part got my pedantic ass in a tizzy. Glad someone else mentioned it.

  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
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    Alan Turing was the father of computer science, but didn’t invent the first computer. Arguably the first computer was called the Manchester Baby and was created by folks at the University of Manchester.

    Alan Turing was an absolute boss, though. Huge respect.

    • Honytawk@feddit.nl
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      20 hours ago

      Depends entirely on the definition of computer.

      There are so many “inventors of the first computers” it is ridiculous. Almost like creating a complex machine like a computer takes a whole many inventions and people who worked on it over a time span of multiple generations.

    • anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      The first (turing complete) computer actually build was the Z3.
      Not many people know about it, because central Berlin in 1943 was not a healthy place for a computer.

      • wewbull@feddit.uk
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        23 hours ago

        It was 1941, and not seen as valuable by the Germans.

        The British built Collosus in 1943 and used it for code breaking.

      • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        Yeah, the Manchester Baby was the first stored-program computer. As others have noticed, you can go down the rabbit hole a long way, depending on what you define as a computer. Fascinating stuff.

        • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          Yeah, there were plenty of precursors (hence the MB was arguably the first). But the Manchester Baby was the first stored-program general purpose computer. Gotta pick a point somewhere.

          • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I think it’s a fun debate between all of them. It doesn’t really matter, but I enjoy reading the reasoning behind each argument.

            • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
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              1 day ago

              Yeah, the whole history is fascinating. I also like to remind my college students that computer science/engineering is one of the rare branches of science/engineering that was founded at least in equal part by women, if not more (again, an arguable point, but undeniable that there is a larger influence from women compared to other scientific disciplines).

          • Madison420@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Colossus is still early then all of those are we still really don’t know exactly when construction started because of state secrets and whatnot.

  • Armand1@lemmy.world
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    I don’t think he’s necessarily the inventor of the computer. There are a few possible candidates, including Ada Lovelace or Charles Babbage, who were earlier.

    • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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      1 day ago

      Babbage invented the computer, Ada invented the programming language that would be used to program it. She even wrote the first ever bug in it.

      https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/18/ada-lovelace-note-g.html

      “In her “diagram of development,” Lovelace gives the fourth operation as v5 / v4. But the correct ordering here is v4 / v5. This may well have been a typesetting error and not an error in the program that Lovelace devised. All the same, this must be the oldest bug in computing. I marveled that, for ten minutes or so, unknowingly, I had wrestled with this first ever bug.”

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        That wasn’t the first bug; it couldn’t have been because the term hadn’t been coined yet. It was just the first programming mistake.

        The first computer bug was found by Grace Hopper, and was caused by an actual insect that had gotten into the machine.

    • ValiantDust@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      While Ada Lovelace did not actually help inventing the Analytical Engine, she was arguably a greater visionary than Charles Babbage, who, as I understand it, mostly thought of it in terms of calculations.

      This is what she wrote in 1842, one hundred years before the first general purpose computer was actually built (Babbage’s Analytical Engine was never built):

      [The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine…Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.

    • Match!!@pawb.social
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      1 day ago

      babbage: the calculator lovelace: the programming language turing: the computer science

      • wewbull@feddit.uk
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        23 hours ago

        The Z3 was relay based in 1941. (Germans)

        Collosus was 1943 and based on valves. (British)

        The Harvard MK1 was in 1944. (Americans)

        There was a lot of parallel development going on at the time, all converging on solutions.