I am in much dismay at having got into so amazing a quagmire & botheration with these Numbers, that I cannot possibly get the thing done today. …. I am now going out on horseback. Tant mieux
Stephen Wolfram does add a few self-congratulatory remarks, but by and large it didn't really bother me for this article. Perhaps this is all part of some grand scheme to inflate his own work, but I learned a lot of history reading the article that I might not otherwise have by researching it myself. I think this piece was well-written enough to be taken at face value.
Might be harder to get the impact assessment to choose from: crash, error, incorrect function, botheration.
But I'll give it a go.
This is the man to a T. I think he would have done well in Victorian England. He is a clinical narcissist, and is incapable of mentioning any topic, subject, or fact without inserting a remark about his achievements.
It gets comical once you get to know him. I'd start pointing things out to him if I ever spoke to him.
"Stephen, this steak is delicious. Didn't you invent the software that allowed the design of the temperature sensors on modern grills?"
Early on, "Babbage was slightly distracted in 1824 by the prospect of joining a life insurance startup". Later, Ada "proposed to take on the role of CEO, with Babbage becoming CTO", where the CTO in this case had a personality that "pushed others away" and the CEO was a "Steve-Jobs-like figure who would lead the vision of the Analytical Engine".
My favourite excerpt from this piece, though, hits home for us programmers who prefer to automate annoying tasks. I found it hilarious, and will probably use this quote in my next commit message: Babbage is said to have exclaimed, “I wish to God these tables had been made by steam!”—and began his lifelong effort to mechanize the production of tables.
More impressive than the comic itself is the amount of research put into it and the footnotes that go along with it. The author often takes inspiration directly from primary sources. For instance, a whole series on Babbage's strange hatred of street musicians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thrilling_Adventures_of_Lo...
It is an amazing work of art and scholarship. It's so much fun. It is indeed thrilling to imagine Ada as an accomplished horsewoman and lady of adventure, wrangling engines both within and without. In one of the stories, she's something of a parkour artist running through the gears of the difference engine. And it's all full of footnotes to primary sources that explain more about her actual life.
I find it more fun to read than Wolfram's blog post. Certainly more fun than, "in apparent resonance with some of my own work 150 years later, he talks about the relationship between mechanical processes, natural laws and free will."
So, Babbage invented VHDL?
The most interesting part of this was getting a glimpse of a totally different society. Little details, like all these notable people that knew each other. And how many of them published in widely different fields. Or their totally different style of speech. Or how Babbage had 8 children, and all but 3 died.
Idiosyncrancies aside, he obviously has the background to understand this material. The main obstacle is putting in the time to understand it, which he did.
The article is replete with historical information, he explains why he concludes what he does, and the result is an order of magnitude more substantive (and technical) than any other Lovelace/Babbage article I recall seeing on HN. I think it can stand on its own. The content is fascinating and is what deserves discussion.
Until he begins writing things in which he doesn't infuse that sort of ploy to underscore so-called credit he perceives he should be given, I think it's not only fair but highly useful to the community at large for criticisms of any work he produces to center on these aspects.
The only counter-argument I could see would be if the historical content of the article were so story-breaking and important that we should all put up with the pomposity in order to consume the never-before-explained-as-well historical side, but w.r.t. the history of Ada Lovelace and Babbage, that's just not true, and there are many other historical accounts that don't try to coyly shoehorn in comparisons to Wolfram products, Wolfram computational achievements, or credit/recognition that Wolfram believes he deserves.
One can clearly see why wolfram would be interested in the ideas of Lovelace and Babbage -- but I wonder what kind of introspection he experiences as he reflects on his perception of their Victorian personalities. People who talk explicitly about nobility and "bequeathing" ideas to future generations, while also being actual visionaries as regarded by these future generations. There's Babbage who believes himself to be under appreciated by his contemporaries -- a character flaw which frequently causes him to fail to act in ways which would've been more effective at recruiting support from others and might've resulted in a deeper execution of his vision. And Lovelace who seems very able to see herself as an abstract object of public perception, due to the controversy and celebrity of her father -- and who devotes herself completely to authoring a version of her story that is unassailable by controversy -- an actor who explicitly asks that her contributions be portrayed only for the merit of the advancements they contain -- and no more.
One wonders which personality wolfram self identifies with more ...
