A Day to Remember the First Computer Programmer Was a Woman - NYTimes.com

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Hulton Archive, via Getty Images Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, is known as the first programmer, because she designed a program for the unbuilt machine.

In 1842, Ada Lovelace, known as the “enchantress of numbers,” wrote the first computer program.

Fast-forward 171 years to today (which happens to be Ada Lovelace Day, for highlighting women in science, technology, engineering and math), and computer programming is dominated by men.

Women software developers earn 80 percent of what men with the same jobs earn. Just 18 percent of computer science degrees are awarded to women, down from 37 percent in 1985. Fewer than 5 percent of venture-backed tech start-ups are founded by women.

Those statistics, released by Symantec, the security company, and the Anita Borg Institute, which works to recruit and promote women in tech, provide context for recent debates in Silicon Valley, like why Twitter has no women on its board. Read article....

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