Hot Chips and Sand
Copyright © 2013 Mary Hughes
All rights reserved
Three days later, Vickie sat down side
by side with Cliff at the conference table. “Okay, if“If we
want to call this section of code both here and here, I think we should pull it
out
into a subroutine.”
It was three days later.
They hadThey’d been working and working
outexercising together for a whole week. Vickie had never enjoyed herself
so much, though she’d never let the man responsible know.
Vickie chewed on the tip of her eraser. “What parameters?”
“Yeah, but higher in calories.” She patted her tummy. “Too many
fudge sundaes are starting to take their toll.”
“Really?” He
brightened. “Can I have it then?”
“You’re worse than my dad’s dog. Oh, okay,” she conceded when he
started to pout theatrically, “You can have half.” He brightened visibly. “. The
design calls for the same sort of thing to be done here, and, move your soda,
here. Should
we combine functionality?”
“It’s mostly ice anyway.” He put the soda on the floor. to
one side. “You’re playing devil’s advocate again, right? I thought we’d decided to limit subssubroutines
to one and only one function each.”
“Yeah, just testing. Can I have your brownie?”
“Victoria Lynn. You won’t eat your sandwich,
because it’s too fattening, but you will eat two brownies?”
“I was just thinking of you, Cliff, and your
boyish figure.”
“Victoria Lynn Johnston…”
“Yes, mother?” She smiled sweetly.
“No.”
“Can I have your peach then?”
“Half.” He sliced it awkwardly with a
plastic fork.
“Watch it!” Vickie wiped peach juice off the print
out and design documents. flat panel screen.
“Have some respect. You
paid $80 an hour200 for the
people who designed these docs.this monitor.
We’re only worth $3080 an hour.”
“We’re actually free right now. Well, except for the cost of
lunches.”
“And breakfast today and yesterday. And, if we’rewe
work as late tonight as we were last
night, dinner, too.”
“Okay, you’re on.
Where do you want to go?”
Vickie didn’t even have to
consider. “Let’s go to the“Mmm.
Chinese? Italian? Sushi?”
“What’s
wrong with pizza?”
“The pizza
place in town.”
?” Cliff
made a face. “Not the one
where they“They mistook the cardboard circle for
a crust and made it into a pepperoni pizza?”.”
Vickie had heard the
story from Tess, too. “Well,
it’s not like it got to the table. They thought the crust was still frozen and
set it.”
“Because
it caught fire in the oven to broil, and it
caught on fire. But no, I was thinking
of.”
“Okay, what about
the place where they make that divine stuffed spinach pizza.”?”
Cliff’s eyes lit up. “And that terrific double cheese
garlic bread?”
“Yep. But,” her eyes narrowed, “But not until you write this
subroutine.”
“Oh, that’s easy.” “Easy.” He
swung a chair around to the nearby terminal and sat down
with a graceful plop. Afterthe keyboard in front
of him and after a few minutes of key‑strokes, he turned.
tapping, grinned at her. “All done.”
“Not again.” She groaned. “That’s the third time!”
“You haven’t tested it yet.”
“I know it will work.
They all“It’ll work. They all work.
It isn’t fair, you know.”
He polished his fingernails on his shirt,
admired them for a moment, and then smiled wickedly at her. “Fastest coder in the MidwestEast.”
“You really missed your calling. You shouldn’t be heading up a
multi‑million, multinational corporation. You should be a grunt programmer,
you techno‑dweeb, you.”
“Compliments will get you nowhere. I’m still waiting for the calling
routine.”
She pulled the keyboard over. Ten minutes later, she looked up
expectantly. He
was just polishing off her brownie.
“I’m doing you a favor. Your girlish figure, you know. Drink your soda, and let me check
your code.”
“Well, don’t“Don’t you
dare comment on the indenting.”
“Speaking of comments, where are they?”
She scanned her code, and blushed.
Even the most immature programmer put in some
comments, to explain the program logic; otherwise the code might as well be
worthless.
“Uh, it’s self‑documenting?”
He looked sternly at her.
“Would you believe I was going to go back
and put the comments in?”
He shook his head slowly and glared.
“Uh, well, you see…” She nudged the thick print out
overhis soda off the edge of the table. It fell to the floor with a loud
thud, pages scattering. splash and the clack of
ice. “Oh, gosh, Cliff. Clumsy me. Could you pickclean
that up?” While
he was distracted, Vickie grabbed the opportunity and gleefully
commented the hell out of the code.
Cliff finished foldingpicked
up the print outlast ice cube,
then stopped and gazed at the screen
suspiciously. “This
wasn’t commented before.”
“Oh, Cliff, of course it was
commented before. . You must be having delusions, yes,
that’s it…delusions brought on by a guilt complex developed from stealing my
brownie.”
He leaped up, grabbing hisher
half‑full soda and holding it over her threateningly. “Yeah? Well in about a second, you’re
going to have delugions.”
She laughed, delighted. .
“No, no, please!” She
wiped the tears from her eyes. “That
soda’s half yourmy day’s
salary. Don’t
waste it!”
He gazed at the cup in his hand as if seeing
it for the first time. “You’re
right.” He
placed it, reverently, on the table. “And the equivalent of two lines
of code from you.”
“Why, you…” Vickie’s imprecation repertoire
suddenly evaporated. “Oh,
yeah?” she sneered.
“Snappy
comeback.” .” Cliff had finished compiling
and linkingsat, pulled the calling routinekeyboard
over and started the compile and subroutine, and was
testing. link.
Then he ran their test.
Vickie sighed. That man could make code jump
through hoops, roll over and beg. Was there anything he couldn’t
do?
Apparently there was.
“Hey, Vickie. It’s not working right. See, when I put in this value, it’s supposed
to return a true, but it seems to bypass this section altogether.”
Vickie stared at the offending source code. Well
hip-hip-hooray, he wasn’t perfect. The problem jumped out of
the source code at her. She stabbed at a line with her
finger. “Here.
See? It’s supposed to say ‘if
be ‘greater than or equal to,’ but it just says ‘greater than.’ to’.
And,” she stared more intently, “this is your subroutine!”
He made a face.
Then he shrugged. “Well,“So you say.
I guess it’s a good thing we’re working together.”
“You guess it’s a good thing?” What an ego.
“? It would havewould’ve
taken you ten minutes to find that bug. Ten minutes. At least. And you just guess it’s a
good thing that we’re working together?”
“Okay, okay. Here. Have a sip of my soda.” Suspiciously, she took a drink. “Hey, not so much!” He pulled the cup away. “Okay, now you’re paid.”
She kicked him in the leg. If it had landed, he would have had a good
sized bruise. The agile
creep, however, leaped nimbly out of the
way. How
did he move that much mass that fast?
She sat down, grumbling, at the terminalkeyboard,
and corrected the code. After
recompiling and testing, she moved on to the next module. Cliff was right with her. He pointed at the screen.
“Should
we use a system library call here?” She
was already typing it in, so she just nodded.
A few seconds later, she continued, “and a…”
“…duplicate
error check,” he finished. She nodded
again, pleased. The code
was coming so easily, it felt like it flowed from her fingertips to
the keyboard. Cliff pulled the general
subroutines book from the shelf.
“Say,”
she stared at the design doc, “I think we’ll need the sector find
subroutine. Oh, thanks.” Cliff had the book open to the page she
wanted, and she proceeded to type the call in. . When she had completed the coding, she sent it to
compile, and swung out of the chair. Cliff, in a synchronous, fluid motion swung
into the chair, and executed the test just as the compile finished. It ran perfectly.
They got through three more modules. Then, suddenly, as they were writingSuddenly
the defragger, the CRTdisplay flared
into a screenful of scrolling gibberish. Just as suddenly, it stopped.
Vickie cleared the screen, andto a single
line glowedpulsing alert icon.
“E‑mail,” Cliff offered.
“I know.” She
baredVickie hovered over it with her teeth. When he didn’t offer any more wisecracks,mouse.
The tag displayed, “From John” so she punched in the mail
access. “It’sclicked.
A window popped up. She read, “System alarm from Tess,”
she relayed, surprised. “‘John.
Vickie, it’s after 9:00. Get out of here. p.m.. Go home!! Love, TessJohn.’ Oh, Cliff, isn’t that nice of…nine o’clock!”
Cliff had already cleared the table and was
half‑way out the door. “Pizza
time!” he crowed.
Vickie shrugged, then
smiled and logged out. “Oh
boy. Overtime pay!”
