Iceman did not believe in god. God did not exist for him. In fact, he was so sure that God did not exist, that he sometimes wished that God did exist.
The ambiguity of answers to questions that plagues his mind troubled and intrigued him simultaneously. It was perhaps the trouble seeker in him that was intrigued by this very fact. Without this ambiguity, if the answers to his questions were defined and codified, he could not get pleasure from asking himself and others these questions again and again. For pleasure is indeed to be had in repetition, contrary to common conception. The difference is, the repetition does not guarantee the same result, it is the randomness of his answers, the additive white noise, the errors in transmission that made the deliberation on mundane and often deemed unworthy queries pleasurable.
------------------------------
6 May 2012: The usual
"Women", he started with an attempted look of disgust, "you people seem to be born with a guide book, 'How to string along men who fall in love with you'".
She was offended, but couldn't help letting out a quick giggle, as she was amused too.
He quickly added, "But of course, that is not fair to you guys, I mean, I myself seem to have been born with a guide book titled, 'How to get strung along by women who you fall in love with.'".
This time, they both ended up laughing, she, as she would at a joke on TV, while he at his own helpless misery.
-----
He asked her, "have you ever seen your parents work together for a prolonged period of time? And I am talking about a time when you were old enough to observe and judge people, not when you were young and riding in the front of Chetak scooters." She paused, she knew why he was asking this question, and she was afraid that her answer would prove him right.
"Oh... and what do you think that age is?", she asked, intending to stall him. Her discomfort and attempted segue was answer enough for him. But he humored her, "I'm talking about that age when you stop trusting your friends completely, when you start building walls around yourself to keep people at a distance, when you start putting conditionals around your code".
"Conditionals?" she asked with a perplexed expression.
"Yes, conditionals; if and case statements. You start adding them to your code, replicating existing parts, modifying them to give slightly different outputs for different inputs. Of course much of this is done sub-consciously, we humans seem to be have an innate tool in our brains that does this for us, but unfortunately, tools don't leave comments. Only few conditionals will be added intentionally and with full awareness, and here you might add some notes that help you recall why you are making this change of behavior..."
She, to her own surprise, listened with interest to all of his poorly disguised allegorical statements and found that it all made sense to her. He went on, "...and so, while before your code was simple, elegant and efficient, now it becomes ugly, convoluted and unreadable. Now it becomes very difficult for someone else to read your code and understand it."
Naturally, the only thing that she caught from this was that he called her code "ugly".
"Oh! So you think my code is convoluted and ugly is it?". He was expecting this a moment after he made the statement. "If its so ugly, then why do you want to be with me?", she cried.
Gathering himself, he said, "I saw a few outputs from you for certain small set of inputs that I gave, which I liked more than any outputs I had seen before." A twinkle shone in his eyes as he commented himself for the quick recovery and continued, "I know that that small set of inputs is not enough to characterize your entire code, but at least I know that it has the capability to produce truly wonderful results. I also know that I may not be able to replicate those inputs in a different setting and environment..."
"Ah! So what if you are never able to get those outputs you loved so much from me again?"
"Well... if I were to have full access to the source code", he simpered, unable to contain a sly smile as she blushed, "then I could spent an entire lifetime reading it, understanding it, working out all the necessary paths to take to get those beautiful outputs, and finally figuring out what inputs to give to get them...". As he was saying this, he saw the flaw in his argument, he blinked and looked away, the smile vanishing from his face; what if one of the required inputs was intimately and inseparably tied to the original environment they were in. What if it was impossible to exercise the said paths, outside of that environment?
As he raised his eyes to look back at her sweet little face, he saw that she was smiling: a sad but knowing smile.
"Damn it all!", he thought, "Damn it all to fucking hell!".
--------
His name was I., Mr. I.. I. was a geek.
I. like most people, thought that generally, writers were secluded, reserved, unsociable people. But isnt publishing something you wrote a civilized way of standing up and shouting, "Hey, you all! This is me! This is what I am thinking about! I want to know if you guys think what I am thinking about is worth thinking about..." I. could now see that authors were not so different after all, they too were looking for society to acknowledge their existence. The only difference being, most of them were probably aware that that was what they were doing.
The ambiguity of answers to questions that plagues his mind troubled and intrigued him simultaneously. It was perhaps the trouble seeker in him that was intrigued by this very fact. Without this ambiguity, if the answers to his questions were defined and codified, he could not get pleasure from asking himself and others these questions again and again. For pleasure is indeed to be had in repetition, contrary to common conception. The difference is, the repetition does not guarantee the same result, it is the randomness of his answers, the additive white noise, the errors in transmission that made the deliberation on mundane and often deemed unworthy queries pleasurable.
------------------------------
6 May 2012: The usual
"Women", he started with an attempted look of disgust, "you people seem to be born with a guide book, 'How to string along men who fall in love with you'".
She was offended, but couldn't help letting out a quick giggle, as she was amused too.
He quickly added, "But of course, that is not fair to you guys, I mean, I myself seem to have been born with a guide book titled, 'How to get strung along by women who you fall in love with.'".
This time, they both ended up laughing, she, as she would at a joke on TV, while he at his own helpless misery.
-----
He asked her, "have you ever seen your parents work together for a prolonged period of time? And I am talking about a time when you were old enough to observe and judge people, not when you were young and riding in the front of Chetak scooters." She paused, she knew why he was asking this question, and she was afraid that her answer would prove him right.
"Oh... and what do you think that age is?", she asked, intending to stall him. Her discomfort and attempted segue was answer enough for him. But he humored her, "I'm talking about that age when you stop trusting your friends completely, when you start building walls around yourself to keep people at a distance, when you start putting conditionals around your code".
"Conditionals?" she asked with a perplexed expression.
"Yes, conditionals; if and case statements. You start adding them to your code, replicating existing parts, modifying them to give slightly different outputs for different inputs. Of course much of this is done sub-consciously, we humans seem to be have an innate tool in our brains that does this for us, but unfortunately, tools don't leave comments. Only few conditionals will be added intentionally and with full awareness, and here you might add some notes that help you recall why you are making this change of behavior..."
She, to her own surprise, listened with interest to all of his poorly disguised allegorical statements and found that it all made sense to her. He went on, "...and so, while before your code was simple, elegant and efficient, now it becomes ugly, convoluted and unreadable. Now it becomes very difficult for someone else to read your code and understand it."
Naturally, the only thing that she caught from this was that he called her code "ugly".
"Oh! So you think my code is convoluted and ugly is it?". He was expecting this a moment after he made the statement. "If its so ugly, then why do you want to be with me?", she cried.
Gathering himself, he said, "I saw a few outputs from you for certain small set of inputs that I gave, which I liked more than any outputs I had seen before." A twinkle shone in his eyes as he commented himself for the quick recovery and continued, "I know that that small set of inputs is not enough to characterize your entire code, but at least I know that it has the capability to produce truly wonderful results. I also know that I may not be able to replicate those inputs in a different setting and environment..."
"Ah! So what if you are never able to get those outputs you loved so much from me again?"
"Well... if I were to have full access to the source code", he simpered, unable to contain a sly smile as she blushed, "then I could spent an entire lifetime reading it, understanding it, working out all the necessary paths to take to get those beautiful outputs, and finally figuring out what inputs to give to get them...". As he was saying this, he saw the flaw in his argument, he blinked and looked away, the smile vanishing from his face; what if one of the required inputs was intimately and inseparably tied to the original environment they were in. What if it was impossible to exercise the said paths, outside of that environment?
As he raised his eyes to look back at her sweet little face, he saw that she was smiling: a sad but knowing smile.
"Damn it all!", he thought, "Damn it all to fucking hell!".
--------
His name was I., Mr. I.. I. was a geek.
I. like most people, thought that generally, writers were secluded, reserved, unsociable people. But isnt publishing something you wrote a civilized way of standing up and shouting, "Hey, you all! This is me! This is what I am thinking about! I want to know if you guys think what I am thinking about is worth thinking about..." I. could now see that authors were not so different after all, they too were looking for society to acknowledge their existence. The only difference being, most of them were probably aware that that was what they were doing.
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