Visually Explained: How Can Executives Grasp What Programming Is All About?
Quite often, non-technical executives have difficulties understanding what programming, on a very fundamental level, is all about. Because of that knowledge-gap, they tend to hire and overburden experienced data professionals with tasks which they are hopelessly overqualified for. Such as, for example, doing ad-hoc SQL queries on CRM data: “You’re the go-to-guy for all things data, and we need the results for the board meeting tomorrow.” That’s a quite humbling and frustrating experience for anyone who calls himself a Data Scientist, even for a freshman.
On the other hand, though, the non-technical staff is literally scared of programming. Writing code is often viewed as an esoteric occupation which only a few chosen people are qualified for. Because of that common misconception, companies miss out on opportunities to upskill their current employee base to solve data-related tasks that the previously mentioned Data Scientists should not be bothered with.
Programming = Automation
On a very fundamental level, programming is about automating repeatable tasks. Let’s say, you want to load boxes onto trucks, depending on characteristics such as their color. How would you go about this?
You can write a program that loops through a list