MENTAL STRETCHES

Here’s a question: Are you more impressed by a feat when you have some knowledge of how it is done or no knowledge at all, in which case the effect is like magic, like a champion ice skater’s quad jumps?

While I’d rather it be the former, because my appreciation would be an informed response – J.D. Salinger’s brilliance at dialogue, for example, or Junot Diaz’s characterisation skills – I must admit, with the things I have absolutely no aptitude in, and not for lack of trying, my reaction is one of reverent awe. That’s how I feel about coding. More so, when the coding is done by a woman, for how many of them are there compared to men in the tech world?

So, Masako Wakamiya is a marvel. She’s the 82-year- old Japanese woman who bought her fi rst computer at age 60, taught herself how to code and developed an iPhone game for seniors. She made world headlines, and rightly so. She’s cracked an ageist, male- dominated industry.

Closer to home, Ayesha Khanna, this month’s cover personality, is another marvel. If the aspirations of this former Wall Street programmer are realised, Wakamiya would not be the exception, but the rule, in time to come. Spurred by a mother’s discouragement of her daughter’s interest in robotics, Khanna, who founded AI consultancy fi rm Addo AI, set up 21st Century Girls to teach coding, data and AI to girls in Singapore. These skills, she insists, will give them the creative confidence to pursue any passion in an AI-infused future.

My ambitions are more modest. At some time, I would like to look at a line of what is currently gibberish and say, “My, what an elegant code”, and know what the heck I am talking about.