Martin Heller
Contributing Writer

That was Really Horrible

analysis
Jul 4, 20071 min

There's an odd New England tradition celebrated on the 4th of July: a Horribles Parade. Andover still has one, and so do Beverly, Gloucester, Nahant, and Hopkinton, that I know of. I don't know about those other towns, but in Andover anyone who wishes to can march. These days, it tends to be tame fun. There a lot of kids on bikes or in wagons decorated in red, white, and blue, as well as a band or two.

I don’t know about those other towns, but in Andover anyone who wishes to can march. These days, it tends to be tame fun. There a lot of kids on bikes or in wagons decorated in red, white, and blue, as well as a band or two. Apparently in the 19th century the Andover Horribles parade was the scene of some pointed social commentary, and a few years ago the Historical Society tried to bring this back by marching as a unit, all with masks in the image of our town manager, “Buzz.”

These days, after those parading arrive in our little Central Park, all the participants get buttons, a few get prizes, and the judge announces that “That was really horrible.” The parade is preceded by a pancake breakfast, and later on there’s a band concert, both in the park.

And yes, we also have fireworks.

Martin Heller

Martin Heller is a contributing writer at InfoWorld. Formerly a web and Windows programming consultant, he developed databases, software, and websites from his office in Andover, Massachusetts, from 1986 to 2010. From 2010 to August of 2012, Martin was vice president of technology and education at Alpha Software. From March 2013 to January 2014, he was chairman of Tubifi, maker of a cloud-based video editor, having previously served as CEO.

Martin is the author or co-author of nearly a dozen PC software packages and half a dozen Web applications. He is also the author of several books on Windows programming. As a consultant, Martin has worked with companies of all sizes to design, develop, improve, and/or debug Windows, web, and database applications, and has performed strategic business consulting for high-tech corporations ranging from tiny to Fortune 100 and from local to multinational.

Martin’s specialties include programming languages C++, Python, C#, JavaScript, and SQL, and databases PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, Google Cloud Spanner, CockroachDB, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Couchbase. He writes about software development, data management, analytics, AI, and machine learning, contributing technology analyses, explainers, how-to articles, and hands-on reviews of software development tools, data platforms, AI models, machine learning libraries, and much more.

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