The Polymath Bash!

Before software took over our lives, and software engineering was its own profession, coders were cut from the same cloth. Developers were mostly computer science graduates, with the remainder made up of electrical engineers, physicists and the odd mathematician.

These days the trade attracts talent from a wide variety of backgrounds and academic disciplines. It's not unusual to find world class coders who started in economics, geography or the arts. Of course becoming a developer doesn't mean renouncing your previous intellectual loyalties, and many techies continue on with their previous vocation through hobbies and side jobs.

The September BASH will investigate whether alloys are indeed stronger. Does our industry benefit from many different perspectives? Do skills cross over from poetry, music, and historical research into software engineering? Do our outside interests make us better at our trade? Or would we all be better off devoting our free time to Project Euler?

We have three excellent speakers to expound on this topic. As ever questions will be gratefully accepted and (hopefully) the debate will be impassioned. Once again this will be a virtual event, so there is no limit on attendance, but please sign up early so we can gauge interest.

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What A Medieval Monk Can Teach Us About Technical Writing
Claire Bodanis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-bodanis-00a7831/)

At the launch of my book about corporate reporting, one of my colleagues threw me a googly. ‘What insights into reporting,’ he asked
‘can one get from the Venerable Bede?’

My academic background was in mediaeval texts, including an MPhil on
some unedited works of the Venerable Bede, a seventh/eighth century Benedictine. Bede in fact has a lot to teach us and, on a more practical level, there are many parallels between my study of mediaeval texts, my work in corporate reporting, and the challenges you no doubt face in communicating with a non-specialist audience.

We geeks love our subject, and can easily fall into the trap of imagining our internal language must be universal. We fail to see jargon for what it is. Ultimately we need to take a step back and remember why we’re
communicating in the first place. Who is the audience? Why am I addressing them? What do I want them to do as a result? In short – respect your reader.

Why Hobbies Are Good For You
Ciaran Conliffe (@shinyemptyhead)

A popular subject at Bash's past has been people's hobby projects...but does your hobby need to be coding for it to be valuable to you as a developer? Ciaran Conliffe says no. He's here to talk about how his hobby of writing has helped him through the last ten years of his career, making him a more rounded engineer and teaching him valuable lessons and skills. Find out how writing an article about a castle in Limerick led inexorably to him speaking at an international IT Security conference, and discover the mysterious role that Uri Geller played in changing his life. As a bonus, you can even find out what he thinks other people (including our own Garth Gilmour!) have taken from their hobbies.

Making Noise: What Music Can Teach You About Software Engineering
Philip Lawson (@PLawsonGuitar)

If you open up your favourite search engine and ask “do musicians make good programmers”, it will tell you “yes, because maths”. It can't be that simple, can it? While music does have deep maths behind it, you don't need to know Pythagoras' theory of harmonic intervals to make good music, nor does it actually help that much. Join me as I talk through my experience teaching and performing classical music, and share the specific skills and approaches that have helped me in my career as a software developer. Expect occasional insights and lots of puppy pics.

Link to join - https://youtu.be/7MEAkHjp2d8