Explaining Web Services to Royalty
The Earl and Countess of Wessex (Ed and Soph) popped into our office, as a part of a visit to Sheffield on wednesday. I'm not entirely sure why our office was selected for a quick "hello" but it was certainly a novel experience.
Whilst Edward was chatting away with Steve and Sugarcane, i got ambushed by Sophie who sneaked around the office. One minute i'm looking at some regex, the next there's a voice in my ear introducing the Countess of Wessex. DOH. I stumbled to my feet and did my "Hello Your Highness, it's a pleasure to meet you" bit and then found myself faced with the question: "So, what is that you do here, what's that on the screen?!".
"You mean, you really understand what all that stuff means? Function do F T P connect bracket dollar hostname bracket, what?"
Haha. I found myself explaining how programming is like a foreign language: once you've got your head around the verbs, nouns and specific grammar it's just like speaking to the machine.
She asked whether there was some standard way of doing things... sadly i was too slow, and missed an opportunity to go off on one about the semantic web and stadards-driven design! I was impressed with her general knowledge, i started to explain how my code was interacting with a web service and she finished off my sentance for me, describing the process accurately.
However, tip for you: if the daughter-in-law of The Queen makes a joke about instruction manuals being gibberish - just laugh: don't kill the moment by disagreeing!
I'm going to try and get a photo of our conversation, i remember freaking out when i looked around, seeing the flash-bulb firing and the entourage watching me.
All in all, good stuff. I wish i'd been more prepared as (joking aside) things like accessibility would i'm sure have made good conversation. Two-handshakes from the Queen now, only step better to go :).
Whilst Edward was chatting away with Steve and Sugarcane, i got ambushed by Sophie who sneaked around the office. One minute i'm looking at some regex, the next there's a voice in my ear introducing the Countess of Wessex. DOH. I stumbled to my feet and did my "Hello Your Highness, it's a pleasure to meet you" bit and then found myself faced with the question: "So, what is that you do here, what's that on the screen?!".
"You mean, you really understand what all that stuff means? Function do F T P connect bracket dollar hostname bracket, what?"
Haha. I found myself explaining how programming is like a foreign language: once you've got your head around the verbs, nouns and specific grammar it's just like speaking to the machine.
She asked whether there was some standard way of doing things... sadly i was too slow, and missed an opportunity to go off on one about the semantic web and stadards-driven design! I was impressed with her general knowledge, i started to explain how my code was interacting with a web service and she finished off my sentance for me, describing the process accurately.
However, tip for you: if the daughter-in-law of The Queen makes a joke about instruction manuals being gibberish - just laugh: don't kill the moment by disagreeing!
I'm going to try and get a photo of our conversation, i remember freaking out when i looked around, seeing the flash-bulb firing and the entourage watching me.
All in all, good stuff. I wish i'd been more prepared as (joking aside) things like accessibility would i'm sure have made good conversation. Two-handshakes from the Queen now, only step better to go :).
posted by Rich at 10:39 PM
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