God of Money

Woosung focused on debugging as he ate a burger for his dinner. Park Junwoo and Kim Yonggun assisted him while Yoon Gihwan remained nearby. Woosung thought about his situation.

‘55,000 dollars for tonight’s work. If the consultation project works out, then another 50,000 dollars. Total 105,000 dollars. Not bad.’

The room was tense, but Woosung could remain relaxed because the modifications he had to make for this problem was easy. The problem was something that either one could recognize right away or never understand at all. Luckily, Woosung already knew the answer since he remembered it from the past.

‘First, I need to pay back my student loan. I’ll give 20,000 dollars to my parents and I will save the rest for future cryptocurrency mining. If I get a chance, I should also buy stocks when the financial crisis happens.’

He filled his head with plans for his money. Because he wasn’t paying attention to the work, his typing slowed down. Yoon Gihwan noticed this and whispered to Woosung angrily.

“Hey, do you realize how many people are watching you? You better do a good job, got it?”

It wasn’t just the Daesan staffs that were waiting for him. People also came from ST Data System and Daeyang System to monitor him. Woosung asked the crowd.

“Is there anyone who works with the server here? I need someone to look at the updates on the transaction fees and balances with me.”

A well-dressed man stepped forward.

“The server developer is working on debugging. I am the PM from the server department. My name is Kwon Hyungeun.”

PM.

It was an acronym for Project Manager. PMs managed deadlines, staff schedules, and communications with other companies.

“Oh…. PM Kwon.”

It was a familiar face. After Daesan’s one-year contract with Nuri Finances ended, Kwon Hyungeun thought highly of Woosung and offered a job at ST Data System. ST was slightly bigger than Daesan and offered a higher salary, so Woosung took the offer and spent 6 years at ST.

“Is there a problem with the updates?”

“After they complete the transactions, it should update balances after the fees, right?”

Kwon Hyungeun nodded.

“And there are two different fee rates?”

Kwon Hyungeun nodded again. Everyone listened to Woosung in fascination.

“To customers who pay the monthly subscription fee of 13 dollars, the transaction fee is 0.00811%. If you don’t pay the monthly fee, the rate is 0.011%.”

Woosung gave a pragmatic explanation.

“This is how the program should work. It completes a transaction. Based on the customer’s profile, the transaction fee is calculated. The fee gets deducted, and the balance gets updated. Right?”

Woosung didn’t wait for an answer but pointed at the Visual Studio program on the monitor.

“Here is the implemented code on the server. It starts from the 452nd line of StockTrade.cpp file. On the 512th line is where it determines the transaction fee rate. I will now try to bring up that function.”

result value : 0.011.

result value : 0.011.

result value : 0.011.

result value : 0.011.

Same numbers kept appearing on the screen. As Woosung remained silent, Yoon Gihwan became impatient and shouted.

“Hey!”

He then realized that there was an audience, so he added quietly.

“You need to explain.”

“Transaction fee rate. It applies the same value to every customer.”

Kwon Hyungeun quickly denied it.

“That can’t be… I checked the DB value….”

Kwak Jungwook looked at Kwon Hyungeun and asked.

“Are you sure you confirmed it?”

Kwon Hyungeun answered uncertainly.

“I am sure I checked it, but… I will check it again.”

He picked up his phone. Yoon Gihwan looked at Woosung and swallowed. Did Woosung get it right? Woosung continued with a smile.

“There is no need to call. That value isn’t being used by the codes, anyway.”

“W… what?”

“If you look here, the value in const format ends up being used. Wrong transaction fee rate is being called up.”

cosnt was a type qualifier that defined the constant values. This meant instead of bringing up the correct rate from the database, a value was hard coded.

Every time it needs the correct rate to determine, the program was changing the code and restarting the server.

Kwon Hyungeun, who was making a call, looked at Woosung’s monitor. Other developers nearby also stared at the computer to confirm.

const double GENERAL-FEE = 0.011;

const double SPECIAL-FEE = 0.011:

Woosung was right. Kwon Hyungeun whispered.

“How could this…”

He couldn’t believe it, so he kept rubbing his eyes. But it was true. Kwak Jungwook asked irritably.

“Stop standing around and call the server developer to check the code. Run the test!”

“This is such a stupid mistake… he’s usually so thorough…”

Kwon Hyungeun still couldn’t believe it. But the codes from SVN was definitely from his company. There was no excuse. Woosung said to Kwon Hyungeun.

“Your developer could have missed it while running a test, or a freelance developer may have made the mistake. If you fix this and the Batch procedure I mentioned earlier, everything will work normally.”

Kwon Hyungeun left in shock. Woosung looked at Kwak Jungwook.

“If you accept my consultation regarding the change in the development process, something like this would never happen. It would be beneficial to apply my idea ASAP. The longer you wait, the more complicated the codes will become. Maintaining such a system would be costly.”

The other developers realized that he had solved the problem. They left one by one. Woosung looked at his watch.

10 pm.

He could check the codes and run the tests by midnight.

He asked Yoon Gihwan.

“I think I can do it by midnight. Make sure you don’t forget my 55,000 dollars, ok?”

“You…. You…”

“Yes?”

“WHAT are you?”

“Haha, Somebody asked me that before. Obviously, I am a newly hired developer at Daesan System. Now what you need to do is prepare for the consultation presentation for Nuri Finances. We showed them what we can do tonight, but we still have a long way to go to convince them. Don’t forget that my additional 50,000 dollars depends on this.”

Yoon Gihwan’s eyes widened as he remained speechless.