“I’m not a math person,” “It’s too late to learn how to code,” “I can always hire someone to run the technical aspects of my company.” Three old-school views of executive responsibility in a world dominated by technology.
We wouldn’t accept a CEO who says, “I’m not really financially inclined,” so why should we accept leaders who don’t understand, at more than just a passing level, the technology that lies at the heart of their businesses? Good points from Andrea Coravos.
I’m so glad I know how to code. It’s one of the great joys of my life that I learned at an early age, introduced to programming by my mother, one of the first “power users” of her generation. My mom wasn’t a trained programmer, but she had a logical mind and just happened to be in the right place to absorb and revel in the pleasures of code writing back in the early 1980s.
Through my mom, I met some of her early mentors and one in particular, became a mentor mine, too. I was in high school when Fred Kelley introduced me to dBase and later to Turbo Pascal. I never thanked him for changing the trajectory of my life. I can still conjure up the excitement I felt when I made my first program work. There was a time when I was obsessed with learning new programming languages, both the large and popular ones, like C++ and Java, as well as the small and quirky ones, like Smalltalk and AWK. Even today, when a new language like Apple’s Swift makes its debut, I’m inclined to learn at least a little bit about it.
Learning to program made me successful professionally, but more importantly, learning to program—to see problems and address them with code—has always given me a sense of accomplishment. Practically speaking, it has made me more productive. But more to the point, it has given me a sense of pride, one that I enjoy even now when I see the results of my efforts.
Throughout the years, as I have watched people in their daily office work, I have found myself thinking how much easier (and likely how less tedious) their work would be with the benefit of some simple code.
Take, for example, the analyst who receives data in a spreadsheet but wants to combine it with data elsewhere or summarize it in a different way. Or consider the assistant who methodically copies and pastes photos of receipts into an expense tracking system. These mundane, everyday chores, and hundreds more just like them, needn’t be done manually.
For most non-technical people, however, the mere thought of coding is daunting, cloaked in a kind of mysterious veneer. But the kind of coding I’m thinking of shouldn’t be daunting. It’s not mysterious. It should be easy, because if you can make a list, you can solve a problem with code.
Of course, I’m thinking of coding in a very broad sense. It doesn’t mean mastering unit tests or employing the latest buzzword-laden framework. It doesn’t mean learning complex math or understanding bits and bytes. Those skills have their value and their place, but not in this context. The coding I’m thinking of is the ability to craft a solution by applying a repeating set of steps. And it’s even better when the solution you build can be smart enough to adapt to some changing conditions.
Where do you begin? Often the choice is right in front of you.
Modern programs like Microsoft Excel have coding solutions in the form of functions and macros baked right in. Automation tools, such as Keyboard Maestro on the Mac OS X platform, make it simple to record the steps to complete a task once and then let’s you replay those steps back at lightning speed. The Python programming language, while remarkably flexible, is easy to learn and supported by thousands of free extensions. Odds are, someone else in the world has faced a problem similar to the one you’re trying to solve and their solution is bundled into a Python module you can use, too.
Once you see the benefits of code solutions to scratch an itch, you may want to tackle even larger problems. Success with smaller projects may lead you to experiment with more complex software development. Or, maybe it won’t. Either way, developing even small solutions in code will make you more productive, expose you to new ways of thinking, and hopefully leave you with that wonderful sense of accomplishment I still enjoy after all these years.
Our English language sits on shifting sands and researching them, at least for language mavens, is fascinating. For instance, did you know that the noun “Democrat” wasn’t affiliated with the adjective “liberal” until the 1930s? Before that, it is most often seen with the words “Southern,” “good,” and “little” (which is apparently not a pejorative use—”Little Democrat” was the name of a ship that spawned a diplomatic dispute between the US and France).
There have also been shifts in how “Republican” has been used. From 1910 to 1950, “progressive Republican” was somewhat common, before being eclipsed in use by collocates such as “conservative” or “moderate Republican.”
Anyhow, political labels aside, the National Endowment for the Humanities introduces us to Brigham Young University’s Corpus of Historical American English. But be prepared. If you like this kind of thing, free access to the Corpus means a lot of lost time before you know it.
When I was a boy, my grandfather, perhaps concerned that I had become obsessed with ephemeral pop music, took it upon himself to introduce me to some classical composers. My parents always had classical music playing in the house and I knew, even as I waded into rock ‘n roll, that my dad, particularly, wasn’t thrilled, but the allure was too great.
Anyhow, one day my grandfather took me out shopping and sent me home with a few records to consider, and I dutifully did just that. To this day I love listening to this piece in particular. I’m sure I never told him how important that was, just as I’m sure I couldn’t have imagined I would still be listening to it so many years later—though, to be honest, I still listen to that 1979 ephemera, too!
Today is the 90th anniversary of the first performance of Rhapsody in Blue. And though, in my opinion, there are better recordings that this one, it’s fun to hear it performed by the composer, George Gershwin, himself.
Though it took a while for the news to surface, New York Times writer Mark Bittman noted on Twitter today the passing today of Marcella Hazan, 90, a biochemist who became one of the genuine luminaries of Italian cooking.
When I first became interested in cooking I scoured her books, making dozens, if not hundreds, of her recipes. It’s all but impossible not to recommend her “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” or “Marcella Cucina” for straightforward, authentic Italian food. She leaves behind a durable legacy of great food.
The North End of Boston is a charming, anachronistic place. There, in the heart of a very modern, high-tech city is an enclave of old-style Boston filled with coffee shops and newsstands and restaurants and people who have lived there all their lives. With some of those people you could become, if not friends, at least friendly acquaintances—though they would nonetheless, having seen so many of us come and go, regard you as an outsider.
I lived in the North End a few years after college, walking to work every morning along Atlantic Avenue. In the evenings I’d take a different way back home through the winding, narrow paths of the Italian section, past Paul Revere’s house (which, bizarrely, I never actually toured) and the numerous churches still standing on cobblestone streets.
1743 map of Boston by William Price
showing the North End and vicinity
Especially in those early days of my first job I would work late most of the time and then stop to pick up dinner from one shop or another along the way home. Thinking back on those evening walks through the neighborhood there is one memorable, and in retrospect odd constant: the smell of fresh bread. In fact the scent of baking loaves was so pervasive that I can recall it even now, more than 17 years later. It’s funny how you can remember a scent, which science tell us is the most memorable of our senses – and, perhaps even stranger, is that baked goods are especially memorable. Perhaps that’s because the literal “nerve center” of our olfactory apparatus is embedded within the brain’s limbic system and amygdala, where emotions are born and emotional memories stored.
Anyhow, on cold, winter nights when the air is especially crisp and dry, the smell of baking bread was all the more pronounced, and all the more pleasant.
The North End bakeries worked through the night and in the morning, on the way back to work, I would pass one darkened, still-closed restaurant after another with the fresh bread delivered and waiting in huge brown bags on their stoops.
I was one of those post-university tenants that kept North End rents at reasonable levels, I suppose, not that I recall them being particularly cheap. After I left, though, as the real estate market changed, young urban professionals, no longer able to afford a home of their own, flocked to the North End and were willing to pay more than the college students and recent grads that came before them. Rents skyrocketed and the North End took on a new trendiness. Generally, you’d think all that might be good, but it’s not good for everyone.
Narrow cobblestoned streets of the North End
This week Boschetto’s Bakery will close. They were one of the bakers to have filled the neighborhood night air since 1895. At their highpoint they baked 1,500 loaves each night. Some North End denizens are bemoaning the loss of their old friend and musing whether people eat bread “like they used to.” But the truth is more commercial than that. The owner of the space Boschetto’s occupies (and which houses their enormous brick oven) has quadrupled their rent and so the bakery has decided it’s time stop their retail business.
Boschetto’s harkens to a time when shopping meant visits to multiple speciality stores. Even in the 1990s, when I lived there, being one who enjoys cooking, I’d spend part of my Saturday stopping at the butcher, the fish monger, the cheese store, the wine shop, and the bakery. Each had unique value. Each could point me to something new or interesting to try. There was a surprisingly large store that sold nothing but coffee and spices. There was even a man in a tiny shop, down a few steps from the street, that sold nothing but vegetables. Being fairly sure he was drunk most of the time, I can’t say he ever really pointed me to anything. But his products were excellent.
The butcher was always an interesting experience. His shop was consistently bare. Gleaming white tile beneath glass and wooden cases that were obviously meant to showcase his products. All of them were empty. The routine was always the same. I told him what I wanted. He asked me what I was going to do with it, which I admit was off-putting my first few times. I would tell him, he’d think for a second and then go to the back and come out with something perfect. He wanted to match the right product for his customer’s need.
All this shop hopping is fine when you have the time. But for any of us, the convenience of megamarts (or Home Depot, Best Buy, or any mall) will often win the day. Life is busy and time is precious. The butcher, the baker, and candlestick maker can’t likely make a living on our occasional dalliance with quality and service. But without them, how do we become more than just consumers of packaged goods? How do we explain the the difference between farm-fresh and processed? Who will we go to with the knowledge to make a soufflé or to find just the right cheese to pair with just the right wine? Are these experiences that are to be limited to the occasional restaurant visit?
Losing small shops like Boschetto’s is a consequence of progress, and I’m all in favor of progress. But I can’t help feeling that it’s also a loss—and not just a nostalgic one fueled by memories of sweet smells.
Articles like this support my longstanding thought that perhaps everything we need is right here on earth (assuming we don’t slash, burn, or exterminate it before we realize its value).
Researchers at the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago are previewing results of an approach to cure brain cancer. What they’ve found is that certain brain cancer cells are remarkably receptive to drawing in a modified version of the virus that causes polio. Once inside, the virus destroys the cancer cell (as well as promotes our own immune fighters to clear the now-infected tumor cell). The modification to the virus, incidentally, is to ensure that the patient doesn’t then wind up with polio.
So far, promising results for an entity that, like Smallpox, one could easily make a case for purposeful and permanent eradication.
When forming an impression of you, what you say only accounts for 7% of what people come away with. And most people will make a judgment in less than 100 milliseconds. Insights from Deborah Gruenfeld, Stanford University Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior and the Co-Director of the Executive Program for Women Leaders.
An innovative new study from Scotland suggests that you can ease brain fatigue simply by strolling through a leafy park.
This theory, while agreeable, has been difficult to put to the test in the past because it hasn’t been possible to study the brains of people while they were actually outside, moving through cities or parks.
But the new study by researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh leveraged a new kind of portable EEG to study brain activity as volunteers interacted with their world.
To be sure, it’s a small first study of its kind, but the results are interesting and point to a short walk in the park as a lot more than just unproductive lollygagging.
A video to honor the victim of the Boston Marathon bombings and the spirit of a great city. This moving tribute was shown up on the big screen at Fenway Park on the day after the capture of the remaining suspect. A day in which an almost palpable sense of relief was evident on the faces of many people at the Park.
Don’t put off helping. A great way to do it is with a phenomenal-looking Boston Strong ball cap. Just $20 and all proceeds go to the One Fund, set up by the Massachusetts governor to aid the victims. The link to these caps in no way benefits me (it’s not some kind of affiliate link, that is).
