By Thomas Etherington, Senior Research Leader, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Institute Fellow.
By Cyril Pernet, University of Edinburgh, Krishna Kumar, University of Cambridge,
By Simon Hettrick, Deputy Director.
Apart from a brief liaison during my undergraduate years, I am cursed with a complete lack of training in programming. When I face problems that are easily solved with some basic coding, I experience the beginner’s dilemma (not unlike the problem with automation): do I choose the frustration entailed in working out how to write a short program to do the work automatically, or the monotony of performing the same simple task a thousand times by hand?
Once you’ve taken a first step into coding, and you see how quickly and…