Bioengineering Interlude

I don't claim that I was any kind of bioengineer back in the day. Seeing bioengineering as a field, with professional farmers, I was outside the inner circle, contract-consulted, as someone with relevant skills in the bioinformatics department.

I'm including the picture above (let's assume it still exists), in this instance, because of the Q-Cath box to the left. Inside is the manual I'd consult when developing code for parsing through what were called "prologs", a technician-entered time-stamped chronology made during a cath procedure, whether diagnostic, an intervention, or both -- a diagnostic might turn into an intervention on the spot if an indication were found.

My coding language at the time: Microsoft Visual FoxPro, a paid legal copy, although pirate copies were also out there, more so today probably since every VFP copy is officially unsupported by MSFT since 2015. 

My shift over to Python had everything to do with:
 

(a) the xBase language (VFP's family tree) fading away and 

(b) my steep involvement in education + reform (slogan: “reshape or die”)

(c) my involvement in the open source libre software movement

Meaning I didn't pick up Python in isolation, but in tandem with my K-16 teaching background. I plunged into the deep end, but more in a "philosophy for children" sense than a "look at me I'm a math whiz" sense. Learning coding and maths in tandem is not a controversial topic in this neighborhood (Silicon Forest), like of course we do, who wouldn’t?

I'm more a product of the Princeton philosophy department than its maths department however. I did study linear programming under Harold Kuhn. Mostly I dove into computer science through engineering courses. We’re talking undergraduate mind you, Class of 1980. My first love was APL.

My idea of liberal arts was more like Hugh Kenner's: let's know our letters, but also our figures, our numbers. At the cost of skipping Latin and Greek maybe, but, living in Rome, I got those by osmosis (in terms of cognates).

Where I might show the most ignorance is around music. One of my frustrations in reading Wittgenstein is he'll include some literal musical bars amidst his prose, telling us what he was humming and its significance for him. He reminds me of Schroeder in Peanuts.

However, as a kind of polymathic writer, I'm not obligated to display omniscience, which is not my forte, but simply to share my maps insofar was they maybe penetrate into some area of interest, such as bioengineering for example, or high school teaching. The trail system is of limited scope, I assure of that in advance.