Coder Lee YongHo – Chapter 100: Breakthrough (3)

He felt that he had a dream.

Even though it happened just tens of minutes ago, he felt distant as if it had happened several days ago.

‘What was that?’

It was as if someone else had possessed his body to code. And the moment he coded, all the boulders that blocked his head were shattered to dust.

After that, he just left his hand to do whatever it wanted to do. When he came to himself, everything was done.

‘At least it isn’t a dream.’

Checking his phone on the bed to sleep, Jeff had messaged him.

Not once had Jeff messaged him of his own accord.

It could be seen how much shock today’s matters were to Jeff.

-Thanks, and I mean it when I said to work together so if you have the thought then, tell me anytime.

It was as if it was a marriage proposal. (T/N: !!!)

Although he had never been proposed to before, he thought that this would feel even better. (T/N: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

‘Not a bad feeling.’

For the first time in a while, he slept soundly.

The moment he came to work, YongHo gathered all the developers. It was to apply Jeff’s algorithm to the current project.

“Then I’ll say this shortly. I have found a way to use half as much data. As such, we need to change a little to apply the said library to the client.”

“……”

“I will make it into a library within one week before I release it, so please develop with this in mind.”

“YongHo! What do you mean? I don’t understand?”

Dave had just come into the meeting wondering what was up. Na DaeBang and James weren’t any different.

They were all making expressions of curiosity.

Decrease the amount of data by half?

Surpassing revolution, this level reached shock.

The era was ruled by data.

Countless people looked for business opportunities via data, and were analyzing human action patterns to set a direction.

To do that, countless amounts of data was needed. Also, such data needed to be saved.

Halving it.

It’s not something that could just be applied on servers.

If it was really true, then it can be applied to all fields.

“There’s a programmer called Jeff. It’s from him. I’m planning to customize it to fit this project. Currently, it has been confirmed that it works on normal files.”

Ignoring Dave, YongHo continued explaining.

The meeting room changed into a place of shock.

The meeting wasn’t long. It ended within ten minutes. However, the people couldn’t hide their excited expressions.

Anyone who has interest in the related field would know how amazing YongHo’s words were right now.

One of them, was of course, Dave.

“Is it for real?”

“Yes, it’s real. I met Jeff yesterday and confirmed that the program was running.”

“…Jeff? That Jeff Done?” (T/N: I forgot how I named Jeff Done, was it Jeff Dunn or Done?)

“It’s the Jeff Done you’re thinking of.”

“Jeff, Jeff Done……”

Dave seemed especially bothered about the word Jeff as he kept muttering the word.

“I’ve been given permission to refer to the source, so let’s try applying it. There probably would be a considerable rise in performance. It’s even applicable to DB.”

“That’s true……”

Dave looked somewhat bitter. However, YongHo had no room to recognize such minute changes on Dave. It wasn’t like the source was in YongHo’s possession.

He had to implement the source in his head before he forgot everything.

Like how professional chess players simulate their match after the match itself, he had to make a program while thinking back to each situation.

He felt like he would forget the already faint memory if he talked anymore.

“Then, I have to pull out the stuff in my head.”

YongHo spoke while pointing to his head. Then, he agilely went back to his seat before running the IDE(Integrated Development Environment, a tool that can compile, debug, etc).

Coding time began once again.

He didn’t remember 100% of it perfectly.

Jeff didn’t code one or two lines.

Moreover, the time YongHo read the code wasn’t that long either. What was fortunate that the bug related things left behind a log on the Bug Window.

All the bugs that YongHo had solved left behind a log on the Bug Window.

Referring to that, YongHo thought back to yesterday’s matters.

‘Setting up the structure using Huffman’s algorithm and… putting an element of prediction inside it.’

The core of a program was just a single line that wasn’t long. YongHo refined his thoughts starting from there.

Perhaps due to not even one day having passed, they were faint, but he remembered most of them.

‘What was important was how to predict… since the probability of prediction would differ according to that.’

Predicting wrong would screw up the program completely. If the prediction was a 5 but the actual number was a 2, then it would become a completely different file.

‘And speed too.’

It was a problem even if the prediction speed was low. If the file compression took ages, then no one would use the program.

‘It will be hard to make the same thing.’

Trying his best to remember, YongHo focused on coding. It wouldn’t be completely the same.

However, he was sure that the server performance would become better if the development was finished.

***

After he had lost in the coding competition, Mark completely stopped sexually harassing Lucia.

Kenneth seemed slightly disappointed, but Mark himself didn’t show anything on the surface. Rather, he focused more on work.

Kenneth called for Mark sneakily.

“Mark, you alright? It’s originally the position you should have taken.”

“Well, I don’t have the ability so I can’t do anything about it.”

“Who dares to call you that way!”

“You saw it too that day.”

Mark seemed to completely acknowledge his loss. Although he did lose by a small margin, a loss was a loss.

As it was a fair competition, no objections could be raised.

Moreover, as he had participated in the meeting just now, Mark was thinking that he had an inferior ability compared to YongHo more and more.

“Do you know what YongHo said just now?”

“……”

“He said he found something that would increase the performances of the compression programs by at least half. It seems he will apply it to our server.”

“Compression?”

“Amazing right?… We were using a lot from the budget on storage as the amount of data increased explosively too… to think he’d solve it using software… Now I don’t even have the slightest regrets.”

Mark spoke while blankly looking at the clouds in the sky. Although he did admit his loss, he felt that he would win again if they competed again. He had the regret that he might be able to win if they did it again.

However, even that regret was all but gone now.

Mark spoke to the quiet Kenneth.

“You too, stop bullying Lucia and come out fairly. If it doesn’t work, then… oh well. It’s not like she’s the only woman in the world.”

“……”

“Well, then. I’ll go on first. YongHo told me to prepare to apply it to the client so I need to look at the code.”

Until Mark stood up and disappeared, Kenneth didn’t move from that spot. When Mark was just about to disappear from his sight, Kenneth quietly muttered.

“If it doesn’t work, then……”

Then he stood up. However, he shouldn’t have.

Kenneth justified all his actions until now with just one reason.

I did it because I liked you.

However, it was too late. Even if the start wasn’t twisted, it wouldn’t have been that easy.

“I’m sorry.”

“……”

Lucia spoke with her head lowered. Kenneth acted as if nothing had happened, but he couldn’t hide his reddened face.

“I have someone I like.”

Lucia rejected Kenneth while telling him the reason, that he didn’t ask for. One might think it was just an excuse, but Kenneth didn’t seem to think like that.

“Is it… the person I think it is?”

“…..”

Now, Lucia became quiet. She considered that it wasn’t necessary to mention such private matters.

He was a complete stranger.

A colleague at work, no more, no less.

“…Anyway, I understand very well what you mean.”

On his way back to the office, Kenneth looked at the place where YongHo was sitting.

He was looking at the monitor and was doing something as if possessed. It seemed he was developing the thing that Mark was talking about.

‘There is no place for you in America. The things you’ve earned here are not yours.’

From some time, countless foreigners had come to Silicon Valley. India, China, South Korea, etc, many people who received the H1B visa had come to Silicon Valley like the tide.

And they took American jobs.

‘Even without the H1B, Silicon Valley will not disappear.’

Someone said this on an American news channel.

That there will be no Silicon Valley without H1B. However, Kenneth thought differently.

The power of the strongest country in the world didn’t come from migrants.

Kenneth’s words were too small so nobody around him heard it.

YongHo didn’t hear it either.

He looked as if he was trapped in space and time. As he didn’t have the brains that other people had, he put in effort to focus.

He put more effort in than anyone else, and according to his effort, his ability to focus became stronger.

He was concentrating enough to not hear anything from his surroundings.

‘Something’s missing.’

He felt like he had implemented it similar to what he remembered. However, something was lacking. 2% was missing.

‘I can’t remember it……’

He couldn’t remember the source perfectly. If he could implement it the same way from beginning to end, then that was a genius.

Unfortunately, YongHo wasn’t within the range where people were called geniuses.

‘Hm……’

Now that he had made a prototype, the performance also dropped. The compression rate didn’t go over 50%, and even on the speed side, just from what he felt, it took several times longer.

‘I should ask again after meeting him.’

At such times, he needed to see Jeff. He definitely did say that he would allow him to refer to it. Since Jeff owed him, he would teach him nicely.

And the offer to move workplaces.

He literally gave out a blank check, saying he would listen to any requests. The time he spent at the current company was nearing one year. Although he didn’t know the company’s system or their work completely, he vaguely felt the outline.

He felt that there would be more things for him to learn if he was with Jeff, rather than here.

‘I should meet him at least once.’

Today, too, the moon could be seen, after he raised his head from work. He now had to go home.

$ git add *

He added the source he wrote until now,

$ git commit -m “Added compression-related library”

And added the explanation for the source.

$ git push origin master

Then he saved the the source he wrote on the remote server.

Master.

YongHo was the owner of the project.