By the River – Page 16 – Thoughts from Toronto's Don River to Seoul's Han River

2020-02-282020-08-29

The End of Retail?

Photo by **Anna Shvets** from **Pexels**

With the ever-rising cost of real estate in the City of Toronto, along with the explosive growth of food delivery services, are we witnessing the end of bricks and mortar retail in this city?

I do not believe that change will be this drastic, but I am starting to believe that we are heading down a path where retail outlets will actually shrink in size and focus on takeout or pickup orders.

I have been to several restaurants and bars where there are not many guests inside. What I do see is an endless stream of Uber Eats, Skip The Dishes, and other delivery people picking up orders.

I have spoken with several staff at various establishments and am beginning to hear the same story… customers are not filling up the venues like they used to, but the kitchen is busier than ever.

Starbucks is one of many retail establishments that lets customers place orders online or via smartphone apps for pickup at the location of their choosing. This is a convenient service, but I fear we may end up with cafes which consist of a takeout counter and no in-house seating. Recently, a location near my office removed all seating. What was once the seating area is now a standing wait area for mobile order pickups.

This seems to be following the trend where people no longer do things publicly. For example, most people watch movies at home rather than go out to the movie theatre. We purchase music online via the web or mobile applications in place of going to record stores. We purchase ebooks instead of visiting bookstores. People go online for dating instead of going out and meeting people at bars, clubs, or social events. Now, instead of going out to dine, growing numbers of people are choosing to stay home and order delivery.

2019-04-21

Chaos aka Computer Programming

Sorry for the overly dramatic headline. Things are not that bad. What I’m discussing is the frantic pace of the computer programming and information technology industry.

I started learning to code December 2017. At the time, I was asked to assist in updating a spreadsheet template for our company. The major features were written in Visual Basic for Applications aka VBA.

I was familiar with Microsoft Excel but knew nothing of VBA. My colleague assisted me in learning VBA. By the end of the project, I found myself interested in computer programming again. The last time I was interested in programming was during middle school. I stopped messing with coding back then because I could not afford to buy a computer.

At work, I use Microsoft Excel extensively for everything. Outside of work, I use Google Sheets. This lead me to start to wonder if I could do some of the tasks done in Excel via VBA using Google Sheets. This is when I discovered Google Apps Script.

As it turns out, Google Apps Script is JavaScript for Google applications similar to VBA for Microsoft applications.

I quickly found the syntax more to my liking. I wanted to learn more and ended up studying JavaScript itself… The language of the web. Despite its many quirks, I really enjoyed studying JavaScript. I lost interest in VBA because I found its syntax “dirty” compared to JavaScript.

I was overwhelmed to learn that JavaScript and web developers use a bunch of frameworks such as React, Angular, etc. The JavaScript world became an overwhelming and intimidating place where I started to feel as though I could never become an expert because there simply are too many plug-ins, frameworks, etc.

Since JavaScript uses syntax based on the C language family I became curious about its often-confused-with-though-unrelated cousin, Java.

My new manager at work went out to buy me books to help with VBA and Java! The company was looking into adopting the Java language for in-house application development. Unfortunately he bought me a book for advanced Java developers.

I remained focused on JavaScript and eventually stopped learning VBA. I started to study Java alongside JavaScript.

Somehow I stumbled upon yet another computer programming language called Kotlin. Kotlin was recently selected by Google to be an official language for developing Android applications.

I looked into this new language because I heard a lot of positive buzz surrounding it. I was amazed to see how “beautiful” the code looked. The syntax is concise and clear. It is a JVM language but devoid of the boilerplate code which is common in Java.

I am currently learning React and GitHub. React is the most popular JavaScript framework. There is also React Native which is used to write programs to run on both Android and iOS. I recently purchased a book which covers both React and React Native.

GitHub is a source control platform used by developers around the world. It is very convenient to have your code hosted in the cloud and available to download to any computer you like. It is also great for open source collaboration.

I recently purchased a new Chromebook which has a Linux container! Linux is very popular in the developer community. I knew nothing about Linux until I bought this laptop. I now do all of my coding on the Chromebook via Linux. I can sync with GitHub and then pick up where I left off on one of my desktop PCs which run Windows. I may convert one of my old PCs to Linux.

The fabulous world of computer programming… it is fast-pace, ever-changing, and interesting. One simply cannot get bored in this field, though at times it can feel overwhelming.

2019-04-14

End of an Era

While power-walking through my childhood neighborhood, it became clear to me that soon there will be very little of the original community remaining. This is one of the last remaining 1960s era apartment buildings in the area. This block used to contain dozens of low-rise buildings. Most were removed during the 1980s to build a couple of low-rise office buildings and some high rise residential condominiums. Only three buildings remain. The above photo is one of the three remaining buildings. All three are now undergoing demolition to be replaced by high rise residential condominium buildings.

The houses in the community were originally a mix of small, post-war bungalows, and other styles built during the 1950s through 1960s. By the late 1970s, large homes started popping up. Throughout the 80s and 90s, even larger homes came along. By the 2010s, I would say that two-thirds of the original houses have now been replaced by 6,000 square-foot monster homes. Even the monster homes from the 1980s are starting to be replaced.

The community is no longer one where the middle class can afford to live. Thanks to the influx of over-sized houses and overpriced condominium apartments, the character of the community has changed forever.

One positive that I see is the massive increase in retail. Prior to the major redevelopment, there were shops lining the main street, three open-air strip plazas, and one indoor shopping centre. The main street was not vibrant. On Sundays most stores were closed and hardly anybody could be seen along the main street.

Today, the plazas are gone, but there is far more retail located at the base of the condominiums. There are more restaurants, cafes, and bars than ever before.

There are still many pockets of the big city where virtually no change has occurred. Most of those areas still retain their original charm and memories, but lack street life as there are no vibrant strips of retail and entertainment.

While I lament the loss of my community’s original character, I do enjoy the new vibrancy of our main street. I still enjoy walking and running along the tree-lined side streets reminiscing about the old days. Houses and apartments may be destroyed, but memories last forever.