Women in tech: Ada Lovelace Day

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, an initiative that seeks to highlight the role of women in technology, and just as we had pledged, here is my contribution to the occasion.

Ada Lovelace was the first programmer. Today you’ll be able to read a lot about this extraordinary woman, her contribution to history, and about many important women in our field, like Grace Hopper, or Adele Goldberg, or Barbara Liskov. I invite you to read about them.

I currently work at a company where women have a significant presence in technology, but it hasn’t always been like that. Either way, the presence of women in our field has been growing, fortunately.

In this first year of Ada Lovelace Day, I think it’s fitting to start with a small tribute to one of my teachers at the computer science department of the Universidad de Chile, María Cecilia Rivara.

María Cecilia is one of the top-level researchers in her area, but I remember her because she got us interested in computer graphics, in the late eighties and early nineties, with her SIGGRAPH videos, where we got to see some groundbreaking animations by the people who would become the kings of the field, like the folks at Pixar.

But above all, she was a professor devoted to the well-being of her students. I remember her especially because she was head of the department when I studied there, and she helped and guided me at certain moments of my time as a student. In the end, you remember your teachers more for their human qualities than for the knowledge they pass on to you.

Greetings to María Cecilia, and through her to all the women colleagues I work with, and have worked with. Forgive me for publishing so late, but this is the first year; let’s hope next year we can have more people taking part.

And you, who would you honor on Ada Lovelace Day ?