Nothing!

Leben 135b – Tuesday, 20.11.07

(Die deutschsprachige Version gibt es hier)

We have been colleagues.Ich believe we have been very good colleagues. Until he quit our company, some day.What a pity!

With W. I associate a very special story. I will have to tell some tecnicalese, and I hope for some patience with me, please don’t zap away, please stay here and continue reading.

I have had developed a very special computer application. Using a programming language suited mainly for basic arithmetics (named Cobol, for those who are insiders), I implemented trigonometric functions. Trigonometrics, that is very terrible mathematics, you need to calculate circles a.s.o. Sine and cosine are the most important players in trigonometrics, the scary scaries for all persons with an average IQ.

However, my Cobol program was able to draw circles, and that really was a little sensation. Based on the new IBM monitors, which didn’t not only show letters and digits, white on green, but now finally were able to display any kind of graphics, in any color, I had had the chance to develop an application for the people in the sales department to look immediately at drawings coming from the develepment department.

At the end of that project, I was told to take over another project and handed over my application to W. I didn’t spend any further thoughts on “my” program, I had to spend my time with the new job.

Two weeks later the customer called. He was very excited. The program still showed circles a.s.o., but the geometry looked very strange. Comparable to modern art, but nothing that had anything to do with technical drawings.

We considered the problem, discussed very much, and naturalley I asked W., what changes he had done to the application. “Nothing!” was his answer. All programmers answer the question for the changes against the program with “Nothing!” Therefore I wasn’t really surprised, because I knew, that in most cases there is a reason when suddenly a program error arises.

Again I asked, again I noticed the one and only answer which developers are able to give in such a situation: „Nothing!

W. printed the proram code, we sat down and read and read again, started at the top, jumped through the program back and forth. He hadn’t made any change to the program, I started to believe him more and more, but something was strange. Anyhow I had the feeling, that this program here was’nt my one any more.

„How do the commentaries look alike?“ I asked W. “Why? What do think?” “Hey, you have changed all the commentary frames!” „Well, the commentary frames, I didn’t like them!“

You have to know that I always use asteriks „*********“ to emphasize comments.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

* * * This is a comment * * *

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

W. on his part preferred plus signs “+”. Therefore no 24 hours had elapsed, and the program showed its new outfit:

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + This is a comment + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

A matter of taste, do You mind?

Not completely! I have to continue my basic course in computer science for a few secondes. Most of You would anticipate that „+“, „-“, „*“, and „/“ stand for basic arithmetics when you implement a program. In addition there is a special expression, two asterisks, „**“, with the meaning of exponentation, to calculate exponential expressions. My colleague W. might have known this, but at that moment he really wasn’t aware of that fact. Within my program I had been using those two asterisks. After W. hat made the changes with the double “+” the whole trigonometrics was damaged, and the result is known already.

After we detected that mistake, we screamed for laughter, repaired the application, and the customer was satisfied on the same day.

Okay. That has been my funniest experience with W.

And then, as I told above, he quit the company, and migrated to Australia, because of love. That has been all, for many years.

And then the internet arose.

And then, once upon a time, I believe, Google hadn’t been invented yet, I entered W.‘s name into a search engine. Without any success. Then I tried his name only, without his first name. And I found a Tiramisu site in the USA, showing an entry posted by female person, T., with the same name as W. Originated in Australia!!! And there was an email address to be clicked at.

And I wrote an email to T., I told her about my search, that I am a former colleague of W., and that I don’t have any plans to bother her, for the case she wouldn’t know him.

I was curious, very curious, again and again I checked my incoming emails, and then, yes, I received an answer from T.: Yes! W. were her husband! What a pleasure! We had many things to tell each other. What a fantastic feeling!

In the meantime W. and his family have migrated to the USA, T.’s homeland. We didn’t keep in touch that much as we intended to do. But I’m going to send an email to W. telling him about this story here in my blog, and I hope, we write each other more and more…

And now this is the last sentence of the English translation of my posting, and I hope that W. and his family will enjoy to read this story in their language…

© Ulf Runge, 2007