The Adventures Of Hax0r Man

Chapter 8

Hax0r Man writes a computer program

by LateBlt

  Like any well-rounded hax0r, Hax0r Man does a lot of things with electronic
hardware, yet he also is an accomplished software programmer. Both hardware
and software are integral parts of the computer machine, and Hax0r Man tries
to divide his time equally between these two realms.
  Today, Hax0r Man is writing a computer program. He's almost done with the
program, but there is still one particular bug that pops up intermittently.
At the moment, Hax0r Man is searching for the source of this software pest.
  Like any good hax0r, Hax0r Man enjoys the intellectual challenge of hunting
down bugs in a program. Bugs aren't a nuisance; they're an opportunity to
have some fun. Like any reality hacker, Hax0r Man is interested in the place
where the real world meets the virtual world: Where real things are digitized
and ideas given bodies. Although some pure software types find physical
tasks annoying and wasteful, Hax0r Man understands that computing--indeed,
the very act of thinking itself--is a physical process, at least in the
current reality that humans inhabit, and so he appreciates the value of the
physical side of programming as well. The process of attaching wires to his
computer's RAM chips, one wire at a time, then energizing them to change a
byte in memory, helps keep him grounded. In purest form, Hax0r Man's programs
are carefully crafted works of art, like a sculpture, every piece carefully
formed out of one byte at a time.
  The sun breaks out and glares in his face, so Hax0r Man pulls his curtains,
closing the flaps on the top of his cardboard box. To someone programming in
a hurry, even this minor and brief interruption is an intolerable
catastrophe, but Hax0r Man is in no rush, because he knows that you can't
hurry great code.
  Finally, he spots his vexing bug, and once he knows what he's after, he
corrects it quickly. His program--a masterpiece consisting of 247 separate
CPU opcodes--is ready to be committed to a disk for later loading. Hax0r Man
carefully sets to his storage effort, using an ultra-fine pair of tweezers to
gently stroke a microscopic magnet across the surface of the disk in
appropriate places. The act takes a few hours, but when he's done, Hax0r Man
has recorded a program on a permenant storage medium (so long as it never
gets near a magnetic field) for the ages to enjoy.
  Placing the disk's magnetic flap back into its sleeve, Hax0r Man lies down
slowly and sighs with deep satisfaction. Any day on which Hax0r Man codes is
a good day. And today has been a great day.