Pretzels

(Post 11)

So, I learned the key to a woman's' heart. (No, not pretzels, that's just a tongue in cheek reference to a talk about the "Soul Kiss" by President Spencer W. Kimball.) Homework. Really. I'm not even talking about 1967 slang, in which the term "homework" is innuendo. What I am talking about is what I witnessed today in the Computer Science programming lab.

So that you'll understand, let me explain the circumstance that today's (today being today, not "this age") programmers faced in room 1119 of the Talmage building:

It's Friday, February 15, 2008. Valentine's day has come and gone. Lab 3 is due for pass off at 6:00 pm. I'm in the lab at 4:05, I ran there the second I got off work. I'm hungry and tired but I've got to put the final touches on a program that's already consumed 30 hours of my valuable time. Suddenly, Armageddon arrives – or I wish it would. My program freezes any time I push a button. I can't do anything but use the Task Manager to kill it and try again. After 50 such crashes it's 5:20, and I still don't know where I messed up. Tension in the room is building. 20 or so other students are in the room and it's silent except for the rainstorm pounding of fingers on keyboards and a few TA's or private tutors talking the mortally wounded through the valley of death. It's 5:42 and every so often someone screams or pounds something or curses the heavens – the resounding "Why?!?" reverberating off the aching eyes of everybody else in the room. A student jumps out of his chair and thrusts his hands in the air like he's on a rollercoaster and its headed to heaven. He runs up and down the aisle and out the door, all the time laughing and shouting "It works! It works! It FINALY works!" We watch him run past the door three times before he dances back in so he can pass off the lab. It's moments like this that make you understand how things like the word "Eureka" were invented. Every couple of minutes somebody repeats this rendezvous with victory until it's down to me, a girl to my right, two Indians in front of her (from India – or so I guess based on the frantic foreign dialogue shooting from their direction that says, in a voice that defies language barriers, that they are as stumped as I am), and a girl with a guy who is helping her work through her code.

It's 5:49; my program is running now and I only have one more basic feature to add. I do it in three minutes and run the program again. -- *BLUG-RA-GOOP!* -- That's the sensation that runs through my body when even though everything else is working, my output is somehow completely wrong. That means I've got to debug – run through my over one thousand lines of code and look for whatever weird glitch I created. My lungs won't move for a second. This project is not going to make it on time, even though I'll still do my darndest to try (I actualy didn't get done till 7:40 or so). I need a minute to breathe and collect myself so I can decide on the smartest way to tackle my newest problem. So I stand up and stretch and look around. Looks like the girl in front of me is having the same kind of problem. She's pale and looks weary. Her buddy is staring intently at her screen. He suddenly gets a bright look on his faces and says "Look! It's right there! You just have to change that ONE word!" She gets excited as she figures out what's going on. With a few quick strokes on the keyboard, her error is gone. I watch them stop breathing while they compile the program and run it. It executes perfectly.

I wait for the victory dance. It doesn't happen. Instead, she grabs the back of the guy's head with both hands and pulls him in for a kiss… she starts with a quick peck and then dives in for the big one. I look away (PDA's embarrass me – I don't know if that makes me moral or jealous or both). I look back up and they're still at it. I try to focus on my screen but they're right behind it. They'll stop soon, I'm sure. I feel grateful as he pulls back, but my relief is short lived. A split second for a breath is all the time she gives him before she's sucking the life out of him again. I think they would have had a full blown make out session right there in the lab if she didn't have less than five minutes to grab a TA and pass off the program. She turns back to her computer so she can add her name to the help/pass-off queue. He's got a glassy look in his eyes. He's obviously oblivious to everything in existence. Neither his head nor his eyes move and his mouth is half way open. That look didn't leave until he took it with him.

Conclusion: If you celebrated the 14^th of this month as "Singles Awareness Day" maybe you ought to learn to debug.

-Schlange