Likewise, people dispute that Ada Lovelace was the first programmer, because Babbage and Menabrea had previously created a few simple example programs.
But that downplays her accomplishments too much. She didn't write the "first program" but she was the first to understand what computers would be capable of doing (for example, that by assigning numbers to letters and symbols, computers could do more than simply perform numerical computations), and she was the first to invent foundational control flow structures such as loops and conditionals. Her program was much more rigorously defined and sophisticated than any previous examples.
>The longest program that Menabrea presented was 11 operations long and contained no loops or branches; Lovelace’s program contains 25 operations and a nested loop (and thus branching).
But that downplays her accomplishments too much. She didn't write the "first program" but she was the first to understand what computers would be capable of doing (for example, that by assigning numbers to letters and symbols, computers could do more than simply perform numerical computations), and she was the first to invent foundational control flow structures such as loops and conditionals. Her program was much more rigorously defined and sophisticated than any previous examples.
>The longest program that Menabrea presented was 11 operations long and contained no loops or branches; Lovelace’s program contains 25 operations and a nested loop (and thus branching).
https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/18/ada-lovelace-note-g.htm...
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/untangling-the-t...
https://projectlovelace.net/static_prod/img/Diagram_for_the_...