Coder Lee Yongho

This was a place she had saved up to go in a joyful occasion like this. Yu SoHyun took YongHo to a restaurant where they could see the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

The time was when dinnertime was just about to begin as they came here after the interview. Yu SoHyun seemed to have intended to come here as there was a reservation.

“Isn’t this place too expensive?”

“I think it’s fine for a day like today.”

The waiter guided them to a window seat. Outside the window, the bridge that connected San Francisco and Oakland was emitting light.

The bay where the sea engulfed the land, and the lights that sparkled on top of it. This made both YongHo and Yu SoHyun drunk.

Although they didn’t drink a sip of alcohol, they had already become drunk in the atmosphere.

Dishes came one by one and wine, which YongHo didn’t remember ordering, was placed on top of the table.

“Will you be fine with drinking?”
“You will take responsibility anyway, won’t you?”

It was YongHo who panicked at Yu SoHyun’s firm words. Although he didn’t realize when he was the one to say it, now that he had heard it, he didn’t know what to do.

At moments like these, he felt that programming, which had a clear answer, was easier. He felt comfortable like he was confronting an emotionless woman.

When YongHo didn’t say anything, Yu SoHyun quickly continued speaking.

“It’s alright. It’s just for the mood anyway.”

Then she sipped a little. YongHo couldn’t hide his worry, but Yu SoHyun was very calm.

This was very natural as the wine she had ordered was a non-alcoholic wine. As the order was made beforehand, YongHo, who had no knowledge of wine, didn’t even think that it was non-alcoholic.

“It’s already been 2 years.”

Yu SoHyun quietly cited. She had already come to America before YongHo had. As such, Yu SoHyun’s American life was already nearing 2 years.

YongHo was also nearing 1 year.

‘Now that I think about it, team leader Jeong DanBi told me she’d wait for one year, but I don’t know if she’s doing well or not.’

While looking at the bridge where light danced around, YongHo reminisced about his life in Korea.

Yu SoHyun suddenly spoke after she looked at such a figure.

“What are you thinking about?”

YongHo was surprised as if he had done something wrong and just waved his hands. Yu SoHyun thinned her eyes and poked the bullseye.

“You’re thinking about a woman, right?”

There was no fortune teller more correct than this one. YongHo quickly replied in fear of raising her suspicion.

“Yeah, I was thinking about mom. I’m worried about how much she will be worrying about me in Korea.”

Yu SoHyun seemed to agree as she looked to the outside.

“I also want to see mom.”

Now it was YongHo who looked at Yu SoHyun. Moonlight was. .h.i.tting her cheeks as if jealous.

However, that was a mistake on the moonlight’s part. The moonlight that hit her cheeks reflected off and was instead making a dreamy mood.

The sparkling clumps of light stayed around Yu SoHyun and was pulling YongHo closer.

Subconsciously, his body leaned forward.

“Wh, what is it?”

Yu SoHyun spoke, surprised after looking at YongHo leaning towards her. For a moment, countless lines swirled around inside YongHo’s head and disappeared.

There was a word that stood out from the rest.

However, the word that came out from his mouth wasn’t that word.

“Think of me as mom.”

“Rubbish…….”

Yu SoHyun no longer replied to YongHo’s mood-breaking words. Then, she sipped her wine again. YongHo, who fixed his position also emptied the red colored wine into his mouth.

Bitterness pervaded his mouth.

Jessie called Dave, who was playing games and not doing work at all at the company, with a loud voice.

“Dave!”

However, Dave didn’t even turn his head and concentrated on the game. It was reasonable as he was wearing a headset over his head.

This was a product on which a red ‘B’ logo was clearly engraved on the black background.

Jessie violently pulled the headphones off Dave.

“Stop playing games and let’s go home!”
“What?”

“*Sigh*……..”

“Wait a little, I’m about to win this thing.”

“Dave……”

Jessie heaved a sigh and called Dave quietly. Dave twitched at her tone of voice and quickly quit the game.

“O, ok, let’s go! Home!”

“Jeff called me. He says we should eat out some time.”

“……”

“Can I?”

“Is there a need to ask me?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. Just what is the problem?”

“Thank you always.”

“That’s it?”

Seeing that Dave was silent, Jessie quickly turned away. Dave extended his arm as if to grab Jessie from leaving, but he only grabbed empty air. Not having seen his actions, Jessie quickly left the office.

Feeling a cold aura in the office from the morning, YongHo shivered.

“What, what is it now?”

“Now you know how hard I have it, right?”

Dave looked as if about to cry. As this wasn’t the first or the second time it happened, YongHo tried to distance himself.

“YongHo, just what creature is a woman?”

Dave spoke while secretly pointing towards Jessie as if he couldn’t understand. However, as if she had eyes on her back, Jessie shouted.

“Dave! Come to the meeting!”

At Jessie’s angry words, everyone except Dave gathered in the meeting room.

As the Scrum method had advised, the team had a meeting for about a quarter of an hour every day.

This was that meeting.

All the people in charge of each area had gathered. The topics of today’s meeting were already shared through JIRA. As such, there wasn’t a big objection to Brad’s words.

“Now we’re almost done with the design so let’s start implementing for real.”

Brad spoke with his hands placed on the table. If it was Korea, various complaints would have come up already. We didn’t have enough time. This part wasn’t finished. That part wasn’t finished.

However, this place wasn’t like that. Work was proceeding well as if cogwheels were exactly in place.

To implement, coding was needed.

Coding was YongHo’s specialty. This was his time.

The various basic development environment setting were already done. CI server(It has a function to automate building, testing, and distributing), which he had only used when doing a project with Son SeokHo and IntelliJ, a common IDE.

Especially, in case with IntelliJ, companies had to pay.

Korea was extremely sensitive in regards to money. Some places even encouraged illegal downloading of common software. They were telling developers who get paid for software, download programs illegally.

A difference in culture became a difference in ability and a difference in compet.i.tive ability.

This place was different.

Even if it required money, if the productivity increased, then they allowed paying for it. There was no limit to the amount of money if the tools related to developing were necessary.

‘Shall I start?’

YongHo stretched his arms by raising them up with his hands locked. It was a warm-up exercise he did before coding.

Coding was YongHo’s most confident specialty. Designs and algorithms, in the end, became programs through the act known as coding.

Then, he placed his two hands on top of the keyboard.

A piece of art was starting to be written on the screen with the language known as Java.

The part that YongHo was in charge of was the server side. A different programmer was a.s.signed to developing the web screen, or the app, which was the contact point between the user and the program.

And YongHo was in charge of all, overlooking all of them. As his salary was increased and he was acknowledged for his skills, he was promoted to a higher position with a bigger responsibility.

It was a completely different culture compared to Korea where one had to pile up ‘years’.

Ability centered.

Although YongHo was pressured, on one side, he felt proud.

High salary and important position.

This was the most definite motivation.

The most important part in looking after the programmers was the code review. YongHo had to put comments as to whether there were any problems in the code that the programmers wrote.

Coincidentally, a request for code review had just arrived. He already had experience in doing a code review to the point that his soul left his body, with Son SeokHo.

Now he was confident to say that he knew better than anyone if it was about codes. Although he was lacking in his knowledge of algorithms, or in designing, or image processing, he was confident if it was coding.

That was the source of energy that made YongHo endure in this place, and the driving force for him to develop himself in the future.

‘Hmm……’

YongHo checked the code review request alarm and had a look at the code that came up on the branch(it gets put into ‘master’ if the code storage is confirmed) inside the Git storage.

‘There are more things to comment on than I thought.’

Even the coding style was different from the agreement they had. For example, basic indentation was 4 s.p.a.ces but with this, there were some which had two and some which had 4 – it was all over the place.

‘This is the basics though…….’

He could just pa.s.s it over as a mistake if there was just one or two places. However, the problem was that it wasn’t.

Moreover, it wasn’t just the coding style that this code had broken.

‘The variable names and the method names are wacky too…..’

It was hard to safely pa.s.s a single line of the code. The method name to check the user from the client to the server was named ‘userChk’ and stuff like that.

This had breached the rules to use as little abbreviations as possible.

‘I did clearly state to use ‘userCheck’.’

He had definitely wrote up a coding guide and uploaded it, but it seemed that this person hadn’t read it.

YongHo felt that there was a limit to explain with JIRA. The principle in the code review process was to check online first, and meet up if there was something to say.

This was to provide an environment for programmers to focus on developing as much as possible.

‘I should meet up and speak about it.’

YongHo stood up from his seat and headed to the place where the client developer was working.

He went to the place where the client developer was but he couldn’t talk straight away. At that place was Kenneth, who was planning a service, and the developer who was in charge of the web side.

‘Huh? Are they talking about something?’

YongHo didn’t think it was anything serious. It wasn’t that strange for front-end developers who were at the closest point with the users, to converse with each other.

However, to pa.s.s it off, there was a word that bothered him.

b.o.o.bs.

‘What.’ (T/N: Wut)

With a single glance, he could tell that the woman was making a difficult expression so YongHo approached them.

“Your boyfriend must have it good.”

“He can do all sorts of things.”

It seemed Kenneth and the web developer knew each other as they were teasing a female employee who was developing the app.

This was the woman who requested YongHo for the code review. With the name Lucia, she was in charge of the app.

Her expression looked very uncomfortable. YongHo pa.s.sed by the two men and spoke.

“Excuse me, I checked the code review request you have sent, but I want you to change a few things.”

Not even looking at the two, he spoke to Lucia. Then, Kenneth placed his arm on YongHo’s shoulders. He seemed to have thought that he was close to YongHo.

“Hey, you’re also interested, YongHo? Well, she is a rare type in Korea.”

Kenneth smiled while showing his yellow teeth in ‘understanding’.

YongHo spoke after shaking off Kenneth’s arm on his shoulders.

“The only thing I’m interested in in the company is work.”

“I know everything, alright.”

Kenneth pointed towards Lucia’s chest with his eyes. It was a ma.s.sive volume which couldn’t be hidden even with thick clothes. Even amongst the women that YongHo had seen until now, the sense of volume alone was the top.

He barely managed to take his eyes off and spoke firmly.

“I need to speak to miss Lucia about the development so please leave for a bit.”

“Okay, okay. But no monopolizing.”

Kenneth joked to the end and left with the web developer. Even while leaving, they were talking about obscene stuff while giggling.

‘Well, there are crazy people wherever it is.’

“Thank you.”

Lucia, who was sitting silently until then, faced YongHo.

“Not at all, rather than that, regarding the code, I……”

YongHo couldn’t finish his words. Lucia, who was sitting, suddenly dropped her eyes onto the ground and looked away.

“P, please speak.”

Although she was hiding it, the trembling words definitely indicated that she was crying.

‘Ah, I don’t have the confidence in things like these.’

YongHo scratched his head and spoke.

“Shall we walk for a bit?”

He felt like she should leave the office first.