Those who view mathematical science, not merely as a vast body of abstract and immutable truths, whose intrinsic beauty, symmetry and logical completeness, when regarded in their connexion together as a whole, entitle them to a prominent place in the interest of all profound and logical minds, but as possessing a yet deeper interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express the great facts of the natural world, and those unceasing changes of mutual relationship which, visibly or invisibly, consciously or unconsciously to our immediate physical perceptions, are interminably going on in the agencies of the creation we live amidst: those who thus think on mathematical truth as the instrument through which the weak mind of man can most effectually read his Creator's works, will regard with especial interest all that can tend to facilitate the translation of its principles into explicit practical forms.
This is from one of the great early classics of computer science, Ada Lovelace's translation of Menabrea's 1842 "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage," complete with her notes, in which she brilliantly lays out a vision of a mathematical science of operations, thus earning herself a place in history as the founder of computer programming. Babbage and others had programmed machines before, of course, including early models and parts of Babbage's engines, but Lovelace was the first to recognize that such programming was more than just adjustment of a machine to get results, that it was a mathematical approach in its own right.
UPDATE
Here's the passage from Babbage's Passages from the Life of a Philosopher in which he notes Lady Lovelace's work:
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher By Charles Babbage
