“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.”

From Note G of her notes to the translation of Menabrea's paper, published in 1843. In the original, originate is in italics. Read in bed with a temperature, the day Noor's train left.

A century later 🏛️ Grace Hopper spent a career on the second sentence: making it easier to know how to order it.

Why it is in a product manager's vault: a carrier score has no pretensions either. It ranks whatever we told it to count. If the weights are ours, the ranking is our opinion with decimals, and it should be shown with its doubt attached, which is the argument of 🔍 Show carrier scores as ranges, not ranks.

The translation and its notes have no source note of their own in this vault, so the line is filed under 🏛️ Ada Lovelace herself.