Alliott Cole sees a large number of tech start-ups in his work as principal in the early-stage investment team of private equity firm Octopus. The trouble is that he often struggles to comprehend what those writing the software that underpins those companies are talking about.
作为私人股本公司Octopus早期投资团队的主管，阿利奥特•科尔(Alliott Cole)在工作中接触到大量技术型初创企业。令他头疼的是，他常常很难搞懂那些写软件支撑这类企业运转的人在说些什么。
"For several years I have worked hard to understand how new infrastructure, products and applications work together to disrupt markets," he says, explaining why he recently decided to take a course that claims to be able to teach even the most IT-illiterate person how to create a software application, or app, in just a day.
在解释自己为何最近决定去听一门号称能在短短一天内教会顶级IT盲编写软件应用的课程时，科尔表示：“几年来，我一直在努力理解新的基础架构、产品和应用是如何合力促使市场发生突变的。”
"While I am conversant in many of the trends and the – often confusing – array of terminology, it troubled me that I remained an observant passenger rather than an active driver, particularly in the realms of computer programming."
“尽管我对许多潮流和各种常常让人头晕的术语都很熟悉，但令我苦恼的是，我仍然只是一名善于观察的‘乘客’，而不是一名掌握主动的‘司机’，尤其是在计算机编程领域。”
Mr Cole is not alone, which is why eight executives and I are sitting in a penthouse apartment perch­ed on top of a 1930s office block in London’s trendy Clerkenwell having our turn on the same course.
像科尔这样的人还有很多。正因如此，我现在才与8名高管坐在一间上世纪30年代建成的办公楼的楼顶公寓里，聆听科尔上过的那门课。这座办公楼位于伦敦时髦的克勒肯韦尔(Clerkenwell)地区。
The programme is run by Decoded, a training business created by three former advertising executives – Steve Henry, Kathryn Parsons and Richard Peters – and Alasdair Blackwell, an award-winning web designer and developer.
该课程是由培训公司Decoded教授的。Decoded是由三位前广告业高管——史蒂夫•亨利(Steve Henry)、凯瑟琳•帕森斯(Kathryn Parsons)和理查德•彼得斯(Richard Peters)——以及曾获过奖的网页设计师兼开发者阿拉斯戴尔•布莱克维尔(Alasdair Blackwell)创建的。
They appear to have tapped into a widely felt, but rarely discussed, problem. Tech talk is increasingly commonplace in business and life. Many of us rely on smartphones and the web for work, but most people, including senior executives, find the language used by software engineers, social media professionals and the "digital natives" for whom modern technology is intuitive, baffling. So, anything that can help is warmly received.
他们似乎把握住了一个大家普遍有所感触、却很少展开讨论的问题。技术语言在商业和生活中越来越常见。我们许多人在工作中都需要用到智能手机和互联网，但包括高级管理人员在内的大多数人，都发现软件工程师、社交媒体专业人士和“数字原住民”（他们已把现代技术当作本能）所使用的语言很难理解。所以，任何能有助于理解这些人语言的举措都受到了热捧。
Decoded has invited me to its rooftop classroom to see whether it could bring out my inner geek. After pacing the streets while struggling to use the Google Maps function on my iPhone to find the venue, it seemed highly unlikely that I would be an app developer by five o'clock as Decoded had promised.
Decoded邀请我去他们那间位于楼顶的教室，看能否调动出我内在的“极客”(geek)才能。我费了好大劲才借助iPhone上的谷歌地图(Google Maps)功能、走过几条街找到教室所在地。看来，要想让我像Decoded承诺的那样在下午5点前成为一名应用开发者，似乎是一件根本不可能的事情。
My fellow students are an assortment of executives and copywriters from Ogilvy and Mather, the marketing group. Decoded says earlier course participants have come from organisations including BT, O2, Facebook, the BBC, as well as the editor of Campaign magazine, members of the Downing Street policy team and the founder of the think-tank Education Foundation.
教室的同学形形色色，他们是来自营销集团奥美(Ogilvy and Mather)的高管和广告文字撰稿人。Decoded表示，上过这门课的人来自各种组织，包括英国电信(BT)、O2、Facebook、英国广播公司(BBC)等机构的员工，以及Campaign杂志的主编、唐宁街政策团队的成员和智库“教育基金会”(Education Foundation)的创始人。
For some, memories of coding are distant. Mike Nicholson, head of strategy at OgilvyAction, the company's branding agency, admits that he had not tried to program a computer since his school days in the early 1980s. "We had BBC Micros and I learnt how to make the screen go red and to print," he says.
对有些人来说，编程是一份遥远的记忆。奥美品牌推广部门奥美行动(OgilvyAction)的策略主管迈克•尼科尔森(Mike Nicholson)承认，他上次尝试计算机编程还是在上世纪80年代初上学的时候。尼科尔森表示：“我们那时使用BBC微机(BBC Micro)，我学会了怎样让屏幕变成红色、怎样打印出东西。”
Now, however, as modern technology is changing his industry, he feels the need to revisit the basics of how technology functions. "In my department I have people who build websites and work in social media. In order to take the fear away you have to understand it. I am here to understand what happens inside the box."
但今天，随着现代技术不断改变他所在的行业，他感到有必要重温一下技术运作机制的基本知识。“在我管辖的部门里，有人负责建设网站和使用社交媒体工作。为了消除恐惧感，你必须要懂行。我来这上课，就是为了弄明白这里面到底有什么名堂。”
Nick Midworth, the company's finance director, says his last experience of computer programming was typing numbers into a machine during the maths component of his economics degree in the late 1990s. "I am sure that would be miles away from this,"he says.
奥美行动财务总监尼克•米德沃斯(Nick Midworth)表示，他上次体验计算机编程是在上世纪90年代：那时还在攻读经济学学位的他，只是在上数学课期间在一台计算机上键入了一些数字。“我相信，那时的编程和现在有天壤之别。”
Like the others, his main reason for attending the training session is to help his day job. "It is being able to know a little bit more than clients so you can at least get by," he admits.
米德沃斯来上这门课的主要原因与其他人一样，都是为了方便自己的日常工作。他承认：“现在可以做到比客户懂得多点了，这样你起码能够对付过去。”
As we huddle in a corner of the living room around the coffee and pastries, there is an air of nervous anticipation you do not normally experience on corporate awaydays. "I feel like I am joining the Matrix," one of the creatives quips, referring to the films beloved of many programmers.
当我们挤在客厅的一角、喝着咖啡、吃着糕点时，大家都有一种紧张的期待感，这是在参加公司放松日(awayday)活动时不常有的感觉。“我感觉自己像是加入了黑客帝国(the Matrix)，”某位广告创意人员诙谐地说。他这里指的是那部深受许多程序员喜爱的电影。
According to Mr Blackwell, however, the popular view of code promulgated by movies such as The Matrix is part of the problem his company is trying to combat.
但布莱克维尔表示，《黑客帝国》等影片所散播的那种关于编程的流行观点，正是Decoded力图纠正的观点之一。
"A lot of the reason people fear software programmers is the fault of Hollywood," he says. "The idea of coding is that it is done by someone who has a different brain to the rest of us – a boy in Illinois who is tapping away on a computer in his bedroom, hacking into the CIA."
“人们害怕软件程序员，这在很大程度上是由好莱坞(Hollywood)的错误所致。”他表示，“好莱坞散播的观念，是把编程视为一件某个想法独特的人对我们其余人做的事情，比如一个伊利诺伊州男孩在自己卧室里的电脑键盘上噼里啪啦地敲击、侵入美国中央情报局(CIA)网络。”
Mr Blackwell and Mr Richards, our teachers for the day, spend the first part of the course leading us through a brief history of the internet before moving on to the basics of modern programming. The assumption is clearly that everyone on the course knows nothing and needs to have every piece of jargon explained clearly.
当天给我们上课的老师是布莱克维尔和理查德，他们先用了一半的时间简单介绍了互联网的发展史，然后又讲授了现代编程基础。他们显然事先认定，来上课的人全都对编程一无所知，因此有必要把每一条术语都讲解得一清二楚。
The good news, it seems, is that ever since Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web and hypertext mark-up language (HTML), the main coding language used to create web pages, writing software has become ever simpler, helped greatly by programmers posting their code online so that others can copy and adapt it.
这里似乎有个好消息：自蒂姆•伯纳斯-李爵士(Sir Tim Berners-Lee)发明互联网和超文本标记语言(HTML)以来，写软件已变得愈发简单。这主要是得益于程序员将他们的代码发布到网上，这样其他人就可以拷贝和改写。HTML是创建网页所用的主要编程语言。
By the time we get down to actually writing the code on stylish MacBook Air computers in the afternoon, we can at least see how it all fits together. All the data we need to use will be stored in HTML. We use a programming language called CSS to turn that into a nicely designed webpage. Finally, we animate it all by telling the computer what to do using a language called JavaScript. Put these three elements together and you have a working website.
到了下午我们坐写来在时髦的MacBook Air上真正开始编写代码的时候，我们起码明白了各种元素是如何相互配合的。我们需要用到一切数据都将存在HTML文件里，然后用一种叫做层叠样式表(CSS)的编程语言，将这些数据转化为一个设计得很漂亮的网页。最后，我们告诉计算机要用一种叫做JavaScript的语言做些什么，以让网页“动”起来。将上面三种元素合起来，就能做出一个具有正常功能的网站。
And, by the end of the day, each of us has built an app – a simple location-based tool that tracks the movements of the user on the map function of a smartphone or tablet device, then alerts them when they have reached a certain grid point. The app could be used by a retailer to promote discounts when the smartphone owner walks past one of its shops, or as a game to encourage people to try to find a new nightclub venue.
这一天快结束时，我们每个人都创建了一个应用。这是一种基于位置的简单工具，它使用智能手机或平板设备的地图功能来追踪用户的位置移动，当用户到达某个特定格点时，会发信息提醒用户。零售商可以使用该应用向走过自己某家门店的智能手机用户推送折扣信息；它也可以被当作一款游戏，用来鼓励人们努力找到新的夜总会地点。
While it is unlikely that we will be challenging the position of location-based apps such as Foursquare, the sense of achievement among the participants is incredible.
尽管我们这个应用不太可能对Foursquare等基于位置的应用的地位构成挑战，但大家获得的成就感是令人难以置信的。
Mr Cole says he had a similar experience. He had arrived at the Decoded apartment with a blend of nerves and excitement, but had walked out a convert. He likened the experience to the "sense of wonder" he felt the first time he went scuba diving.
科尔表示，他也有过类似的体验。他刚到Decoded的教室时感到既紧张又兴奋，但走出去时完全变了一个人。他把这种体验比作他在首次尝试水肺潜水时体会到的“惊奇感”。
However, a day at Decoded is not enough to convince him or the others to quit their day jobs and become full-time programmers. That is a role they are happy to leave to the experts – but now, at least, they feel more confident of being able to talk the same language.
然而，在Decorded上的一天课还不足以让科尔或其他人放弃日常工作，转而成为一名全职程序员。他们很乐于把编程工作留给专家去做，不过，现在他们起码对自己能与程序员讲同一种语言更有信心了。