Why coding is freakin' awesome.

Coding is for geeks. It means staring at a screen, by yourself, to make something that spits out boring drivel. Coding is hard and antisocial. Leave it to the geeks, right?

Wrong.

Well, kind of right, kind of wrong. Wrong enough to be interesting, anyway.

Coding is just using words to make computers do stuff for you. 

That's all. Coding isn't hard, or clever. It's just a little esoteric - you just have to know the right words, and where to say them, and open sesame - power at your fingertips. It's a bit like learning a language. But one for a country filled with friendly robots.

"Coding" can be a single word, or a simple sentence - the power comes from context. That simple instruction can kick machinery into action that do incredible, world-wide things. Think of every button you press on our phone - one click can send an e-mail or a message to anyone on earth. Code is weird like that.

Awesome #1: Coding means Cheating.

On one level, coding is cheating. it's a way of getting something else to do the hard work, all those repetitive tasks involving sitting, clicking and checking stuff on a screen for hours and hours and hours. CODERS HATE THIS AS MUCH AS EVERYONE ELSE. The only difference is that coders have other ways of doing it.

You know those times you do basically the same thing to 100 slightly different things? Coders have a nice little looping tool for that. In fact, they have dozens. They have ways of checking what those things are, and what to do depending on what type of thing it is. All stuff you might otherwise have to do in your head while you could be doing something more interesting, or more fun.

(Actually, this is probably why you don't get taught to code. Doing things the hard way is "educational", or something.)

This is also why geeks love to party - because they're usually "doing" something else at the same time. Or their code is, anyway.

Awesome #2: Coding means New Stuff.

On another level, coding is inventing new stuff that you can then play with. Code lets you hook things together that have never been hooked together before: hardware, software, information, organisations - and most importantly, IDEAS. 

Ideas are cheap, they can spring up at random, inopportune moments. But they can solve problems, ask questions and create new worlds. But without a way to turn ideas into something practical, they remain fantasies.

Did you ever write a story? That's fun, but in a one-way way - sure, you can read your own story back, but it's better to give it to someone else. 

Once you've coded something, you can interact with it, just like anyone else can. What you've created is separate to you. It's ALIVE. If it breaks, you can fix it (or not). But check it out - once code is running, it's spookily our of your hands.

This is so immensely awesome that many people make lots and lots of money from it.

So there.

If you don't like it, that's fine. Many people don't code, and still enjoy life. But I just wanted you to know. Coding isn't scary, and it's not dull. And robots will take over the world.

FT on SNAFU RBS.

The FT's article on the report on the failure of the Royal Bank of Scotland is pretty damning/depressing/encouraging reading. Their link/commentary on the report itself nails it though:

"Why has no one taken responsibility for a failure that has cost British taxpayers billions?"

Other quotes make for more good evidence that FT is the paper to read on financial matters, not some City-suck-up rag with its own interests at heart:

"The report’s language has also been repeatedly watered down after the individuals involved fought a tough battle to remove some of the most inflammatory comments"

"The closure of the [previous] investigation triggered a storm of public and political outrage as the FSA was forced to admit that no comprehensive summary had been prepared, with work scattered across a collection of desks, files and notes stuck to the computer screens of its staff."

Yahoo blocking URLs in webmail?

Can anyone with a Yahoo! (or BT?) account confirm they're censoring the occupywallst.org URL, as in this article/video?

Pretty low if so.

Fire Service up the spout

The story of AssetCo is pretty FU. Privatised dire fire service. £100m+ debts. Allegations of cash mis-use by former CEO. The pension scheme could have to be rescued by public money. Fire engines owned by Lloyds Bank. It's hard to imagine a much bigger mess, really.

Flash-Lit Fiction

I had great fun at the weekend getting remotely involved in Flash-Lit Fiction night, organised by Paragraph Planet, Grit Lit, and Story Studio. The challenge was to submit a story in a tweet - so 140 characters, minus the #flf11 hashtag. There was an initial theme of "21st Century", followed by an all-encompassing "Any" theme. Sadly I couldn't make the in-flesh meet-up that followed, but welcome to the 21st Century...

I should caveat by saying I don't really "consider" myself a "writer". I can do words and have a pen at the top of this blog, but I've never had the time or brain to sit down and write something I really like. (And oh yes, I've tried.)

So Twitter is great for this - you can think of some nugget of an idea and dash it out to the Internet for casual judgement in under a minute. That instantaneity is also why I love writing Haiku - there's no time to dissect and ruin an idea, and once you've posted it, you can move on to something else. There's a great and raw "nowness" to it all.

You can see the final shortlisted and winning stories here - the winners were indeed awesome tweets. I came in second on both categories - which I'm definitely more chuffed than miffed about, what with not really being a writer and all that. (Although I'm even more pleased that one of the categories came down to a clapometer-style showdown...) More than anything though, it was huge fun just bashing ideas out into a phone, refining them to be the right length, and seeing what works and what doesn't.

For posterity, all my entries are below. But I'm also hoping to carry on tweeting stories - they fit nicely alongside 100-word Drabbles and Paragraph Planet's 75-worders. Just need a short-enough hashtag now.

My entries (# links to original tweet):

# I sat, staring out of the flung-open window of my new penthouse flat. Clouds hovered. Birds cartwheeled. I jumped.


# My hand fumbles around in the darkness for a rope, while the clown just smiles at me for another hour. [my favourite]


# I remember the day of my birth perfectly; it was snowing, and I couldn't help but scream.


# I grew up around the trees of this forest. 89 years and one cheap dagger later, now they grow up around me. [shortlisted]


# I thought 'the Great Malaise' was an exotic place. In History class today we learnt it referred to the 1st half of the 21st century.


# The old woodcutter fell asleep surrounded by the forest, and woke up in a field of skyscrapers. He still thinks there's a way home.


# For them it was less "arranged marriage", more "conveyor belt romance". With the obvious, inevitable conclusion.


# We discovered the particle for love on the 11th of March, 2088. The first products hit the shelves in time for Christmas. [shortlisted / clapometered]


# There aren't many who can remember where they were for both the 2000 and the 2100 celebrations. And none that want to.