On: What did Ada Lovelace's program actually do? (2018)

[jcranmer]

That the Difference Engine and Analytical Engine belong on the timeline of computing history isn't particularly controversial, but the Difference Engine itself I've never seen anyone try to claim was a computer (it's a mechanical calculator)--the Wikipedia page doesn't even try to link it directly to the history of computers, you have to go to the Analytical Engine to see the Difference Engine's place in the "history of computing" timeline.

[rsynnott → jcranmer]

To confuse the issue, though, at one time it was somewhat common to call fixed function calculators like this ‘computers’.