Who is widely regarded as the world's first computer programmer?

Ada Lovelace is widely regarded as the world's first computer programmer because of work she did in the 1840s on Charles Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine, a mechanical general-purpose computer never fully built in his lifetime. In her notes on the machine, Lovelace wrote what is considered the first published algorithm intended for a machine, a method for calculating a sequence of numbers, decades before anything resembling an electronic computer existed.

Babbage designed the Analytical Engine itself, but the algorithmic contribution credited as the first program belongs to Lovelace's notes rather than his engineering work, and Alan Turing came much later, in the 20th century, laying foundational computing theory rather than writing an early program.

Lovelace also speculated, remarkably for her time, that such a machine could eventually manipulate more than just numbers, perhaps even composing music or creating images, an idea that anticipated the general-purpose, symbol-manipulating computers we use today.