The bullet point

<Bullet point – begin> 

It was the year 2001. The dot com bubble had busted. And even men with unambiguous sexualities were handed down slips in pink. Companies with a skewed sense of humour even played Aerosmith’s ‘Pink is my favourite colour’ as they handed it down. Protagonist, rookie programmer is sitting hunched over his desktop, concentration writ all over his face. Such were the times. Big Brother CEO had appeared over video conference the previous day and announced dourly ‘We need to save every penny ((read) there shall be no toilet paper in the loo from tomorrow); we need to increase productivity ((read) kiss your kids goodbye, you might not see them in a while); and employee performance will be tied in with health of the company ((read) when you order your burger at lunch and the waiter asks you ‘Would you like to have some cheese on top, sir’, scream ‘NO’) 

He stared hard. The debugger danced through the lines of code in harmony for a long time. And then, somewhere in the innards of a for loop, it careened out of control. The exception on the screen looked as unfriendly as the CEO in the video conference screen. Protagonist, rookie programmer, rubs his brow. Breathes hard. God knows what the code means. God knows what the error means. He reaches down and restarts the machine. Voila, it works. The golden tenet of software programming. The one that is handed down from one generation to the other but mentioned not once in any book on computer science. Restart the computer when something does not work and you know jack about how to solve it.  

Code compiled and rolled into production. Bits of data figuratively skim through the lines of code. Transactions happen. Flags turn from 0 to 1. More transactions happen. In the distant somewhere some customer is happy. And distant somewhere in the corporate treasury, a penny is saved. And another. And another, until it is a million USD. 

In 2008 a bullet point summarizes it all – ‘’Successfully initiated and executed system improvements to re-engineer process methodology of a critical system to realize cost savings of up to 1 million US dollars’. Wow, what profoundness. 

<Bullet point – end>

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