Ada Lovelace understood that a programmable machine could manipulate symbols according to rules, not merely crunch numbers. Her notes on the Analytical Engine are often celebrated because they point toward the broader concept of software.

That insight was extraordinary for its time. She saw that computation could, in principle, extend into music, logic, and symbolic systems—an early glimpse of the general-purpose computer age.

Reference:

Wikipedia: Ada Lovelace

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace