Coder Lee Yongho

After the unit tests begun, the first thing to do was to find accommodation. The low ranking employees reserved motel rooms or micro unit apartments, general manager level staff and above reserved studios. YongHo as an intern, stayed with manager An in a motel near Yangjae where the project was held.
“Did you unpack all your belongings?”
“It’s almost done, sir.”
“This is a first for you, right?”
YongHo nodded at those words. He felt like doing physical labor after finishing his compulsory military service.
“I feel like I’m doing physical labor rather than being a programmer.”
“Hahaha! That’s right, you’re correct! I also think that sometimes.”
“You too, sir?”
“Why not me? Unpacking your belongings in a motel like this and doing the same tests and editing similar programs every single day, I sometimes wonder if being a programmer is really suited to me.”
“I also think like that nowadays.”
Every day was a repet.i.tion of the same work.
At first, he thought that when he entered an IT company, he thought the employees would review other employee’s codes, comment on it and even learn new skills and apply them.
But it wasn’t. The thing YongHo did the most after entering Mirae IT was simple bug fixing.
“Well, I fell into a habitual routine, but you’re young, so you may think that. I also did that when I was a newbie to society.”
“But you have the skill, don’t you? You even work as an open source contributor.”
The reason why An ByungHoon was recognized in the company was due to his skill. There was the fact that he handled his work tidily but he uploads the sources he wrote onto a world open source sharing website called gethub. And he was partic.i.p.ating in an open source project run by prominent programmers around the world as a contributor.
There weren’t many open source contributors in Korea.
“Where did you hear that?”
“You can hear it from all over the office.”
“Haha, I see you have some bug fixing skills. Why don’t you try working at stack overfly?”
YongHo’s skills weren’t great to the point of developing programs usable by the public from 1 to 10. He can work as an a.s.sistant, but it wasn’t to the point of developing newly introduced ideas or specifications. That was why he always worked with SungGyu when he did a part time job.
“Is there anything good by being active there?”
“It’s the most well-known website for programmers. Difficult questions and various bugs are posted frequently too. There is something called reputation score like there is points in Eaver KnowledgE. If you have a lot of those, some foreign companies will offer you a position for a project. It also helps when you want to enter a domestic company since the trend is to see activity history from websites like stack overfly and gethub.
“Oh……”
YongHo also sometimes used his beginner-level English skills to barely translate and read them. However, he didn’t know it was that famous.
“The last time I saw, there was no Koreans in the top 100. It would be meaningful for you to enter the top 100 as the first Korean. If you do, then I a.s.sure you, many companies will offer you a position in their company.”
“There is not a single Korean.”
“Isn’t that why it’s an opportunity for you? Of course, it doesn’t take one day for your reputation to go up, but if you set an aim and work on it steadily, then won’t you be there before you know it?”
YongHo could only nod at those words. There was nothing wrong with it.
“Thank you for the good words. I should check it out right away.”
“You should, it will become busier starting next week.”
YongHo wanted say ‘it doesn’t need to get any busier, I think’ but he didn’t say it out loud.

“Well this… I only looked at the answers, I never looked at how the website worked.”
He surfed the website and he found that there were more functions than he thought. When he looked at the User Reputation League, he found his name on the very last line.
[email protected]/* */
He was using the same ID as the blog.
“This isn’t as simple as I thought.”
At first only the ask & answer worked. However, as your reputation increased, you could recommend answers and receive various badges. And the most important thing by earning points using ask & answer, there would be an extra line in your résumé on stack overfly activity. If you had the intention to get employed by foreign companies, then it was one of the best work experience.
“Let’s first answer some questions first.”
YongHo looked for questions that he might be able to answer. However, a big problem existed.
English.
And the bug window.
If he didn’t run the program, then he wasn’t able to see any bugs on the bug window, and therefore he couldn’t find out the solution.
After searching for a while, YongHo found one question that he was able to answer. A person even uploaded the source for people to run it.
I annswer your question.
After putting a grammatically incorrect sentence, YongHo just pasted the source. Programmers spoke with sources anyway.
…But that was all self-justification.
YongHo didn’t have the ability to explain.
“F*ck, English is compulsory. Might it have been better if my English skills increased after getting struck by lightning?”
After YongHo posted the answer while complaining, he opened his English grammar textbook for the first time in a while.

The office was noisy and chaotic as if everyone had measles.
“Hey, who edited this?”
“Build it quickly!”
“Who the f*ck changed the data?”
Amidst all that, YongHo and HyeJin were trying their best to do their worth. Time and manpower was lacking and work was overflowing, so no one looked after YongHo and HyeJin.
‘Whoa! Is this something a human can do……”
The repet.i.tion of testing and editing everyday made YongHo, who had confidence in his stamina, to feel tired.
‘Even I’m like this, so other people must be dying.’
Now they were programming using sheer will power. Their minds were all hazy from not sleeping but their hands were moving according to their body’s memory.
‘Ah… I think I fixed too much.’
As he was focused, he fixed too many errors. Some errors, he even edited it to its original condition.
‘This…well… Even if I have the ability, I can’t use it to its fullest.”
YongHo, who fixed more bugs than he was given, looked around. Red eyes, disheveled hair, and the sour smell from not fully dried clothes were covering the room.
‘This is like seeing a herd of zombies.’
Commuting time was 9.a.m. But leaving time didn’t exist. Maybe due to feeling their limits, some people were laying their heads down on their desks even though it was work time.
‘I can barely endure because of my young age, but… *sigh*’
From YongHo’s also thought the schedule was near impossible. The manager-level staff who were in their 40’s looked pitiful. The greasy hair and the bushy beard made him think of beggars. In the first place, YongHo didn’t understand why the schedule was set like this.
‘If they tell me to do it, I can only do it. Is there any other way?’
YongHo put down his stifled thoughts and focused on fixing bugs

Translator’s note

Regular chapter 4/4

NO YONGHO! ENGLISH IS EASY! FIXING BUGS IS WAAAAY MORE DIFFICULT! Don’t you dare say that again…

Also, micro unit apartments are very, VERY small rooms with just desk + bed in 3~5m^2 room. The bathroom, dining room, and the kitchen are shared)It is mostly used by examinees for the national exam or CSAT.

My novel is full of old men *sigh*. So far, how many women have appeared? lets see… Su Min, HyeJin, SuMin’s mom (who appeared for like one line), some female employees (who appeared for 1 paragraph) and YongHo’s mom? 3 ‘real’ females have appeared in this story…

Thx for reading!

Translator : Chamber
Proofreader : Maled