Wednesday, August 29, 2012

August 2012


"Good morning, Evans. Please take a seat."

"Thank you, sir."

"Would you like something to drink? Coffee or water, perhaps?"

"No thank you, sir."

"Are you sure? I would rather this be as informal as it can be, under the circumstances. Can I get you coffee at least?"

"No thank you, sir. I'm fine."

"Very well. You've always been an upstanding guy, and I've never had any complaints with your work. Your code has always been top notch. But these accusations are pretty serious. He went over my head when he filed them, and I'm going to talk to my boss about everything tomorrow. This is your chance to give me your side of the affair."

"I have nothing to say about this affair, sir. Cotder's lying. There's no truth to anything he said, and I'm not interested in saying anything else. You can look at any of my code from the last three years, and then look at his and compare them to the Wrysus source code and there's no question. He and I don't document in the same fashion, we don't name our variables the same way, we do basically nothing alike. He doesn't even operate across his array indexes in a reasonably optimized fashion and now he's claiming I stole two thousand lines of code from him? Two thousand lines that run like a wild fire, integrate perfectly with a project I'm working on separately, and don't resemble anything he's ever done? Sir, it's a bold faced lie. He's an idiot and a thief."

"I see."

"Yes, sir."

"So..... I actually have a printout of the code in question here, and I've got some your earlier stuff. Could you walk me through a couple of divergences between the Wrysus project and your typical stuff?"

"Like what, sir?"

"Well, the way you pass the variables between classes for one. It's odd. You've never done that before. See, here and here-"

"It's faster, sir! It cuts four milliseconds per operation off the transfer time, and a minimal run is ten thousand operations."

"Yes, Evans, it is. But you've never done that before, even in speed optimized code."

"So what? I need to do it wrong just because I didn't do it right before?

"No, certainly not. It's just unusual. Why did you make the change this time?"

"I just told you! It's faster! Sir."

"Yes, it is. All right, would you lead me through your chain of logic on something. Now, when you set up the architecture-"

"Why? What did he say!?"

"Evans, Evans. Relax. This isn't a trick. There isn't a 'gotcha' moment here. I'm just trying to get your side of the story. Now, you set up a main class-"

"Of course I did! You can't do it without a main class. What? Did Cotder patent main classes now? Perhaps he patented typing also? What does he want me to do, shout my code at the computer in French or something?"

"-that you named WrysusMainClass-"

"Because it's supposed to be transparent!"

"Evans, seriously, calm down."

"But this is bullshit, sir. It's a damn witch-hunt. You want to see where my code's from? Fine. See this chunk? Yeah, I stole it. I stole it from the Ark project I wrote! Look at them side by side. Even the white space is the same. You want to see where I took the WritePass function? Right here. Look at it. It's highlighted! All I did was switch around some of the names and use a new order, but it's the exact same block. I copy and pasted wholesale. From my own code!"

"Evans. Evans. Evans."

"What!?"

"I know. See? That's why I highlighted it. Look. I even noted this is where that came from."

"What?"

"Right here. Look. I noted it."

"Yeah!"

"Yes. I agree with you. We're agreeing here."

"All right, then. Yes. Sir."

"Are you okay?"

"Yes, sir. I'm fine."

"Sure you don't want a water or something?"

"No, sir."

"All right. So this and that are pretty much the same. You named things like normal. With me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. You know what? I'm going to have some water. Good. So you named things like normal. Then you- Evans, why are you standing up?"

"What?"

"Why-?"

"Nothing! Sir. I'm just standing. Can I stand?"

"Ah, yes, you can. But why?"

"Nothing. I just want to stand."

"Are you going to be okay for this?"

"I'm fine, sir."

"If you're sure...."

"Very sure, sir."

"Right. So, in WrysusMainClass you open the class and then start commenting on-"

"I don't have to listen to this! He's a liar!"

"What- Evans!"

"RAAAAAaaaaaaaa---"

There was a long silence.

"I swear I'm switching this entire department to decaf."


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