Ada Lovelace Day

Apparently, it's Ada Lovelace day. If you don't know who she is, she was one of the first programmers, working on Babbage's Analytical Engine. Of course, he never finished building it, so debugging was tricky, but that's hardly her fault.

Today is supposed to be a big deal because, according to the note that told me to observe this, we tend to overlook the accomplishments of female techs and engineers. But instead of writing about old Ada, I'm going to mention some people I've worked with.

As recently as this morning, I worked with Sherri. She trouleshot a network problem preventing access to our test server. Sherri, I appreciate you getting up early to fix a problem that had people calling me at 7 this morning.

Carmella was, for a while, not the best programmer on our staff. Looking back at our programming staff, that's like being a relief pitcher at the All-Star Game. She's moved on, and I imagine she's one of the est where she works now.

At my previous job, I worked with Bev. Bev is old enough to be my mother in an industry that favors young men. She was also experienced enough to regularly school me on any number of topics. In her particular specialty, she (literally) wrote the book, and having a specialty did not stop her from being very good at other things.

I did college work-study in an IT department that was staffed with more women than men, which is an unusual experience, I'm told. It didn't seem that different to me. Working with women is, in my experience, much like working with men. Is this because women in tech are self-selected to be like men, or because techies as a group are similarly self-selected?

Anyway, we're supposed to share our thoughts on women in tech, or something, but I don't really have much to say. I like working with techs and gearheads. Plus, the female ones tend to be prettier.