God of Money

They were familiar faces. Assistant manager King Yonggun and Manager Park Junwoo were staring at the 15-inch LCD monitor, ignoring Woosung. Woosung found his desk and looked at his own LCD monitor.

‘Of course… this is 10 years ago…’

Until yesterday, he was using the 27-inch OLED monitor. His eyes were getting tired just from looking at the small LCD monitor in front of him. Taking a seat, he took out his 3G phone.

‘iPhones and Android phones were released in Korea in 2009…’

Many took advantages of the introduction of the smartphones and got rich. Woosung had so many opportunities to make money! Smartphones! Bitcoins!

‘If I could remember the winning lotto numbers, I would buy one… But I can’t so I need to be patient.’

He had to come up with a solid plan. Woosung’s head filled with many thoughts. Then, someone stood behind him.

“Hey, newbie. If you arrived, you should introduce yourself. What are you doing sitting down?”

It was Daesan System’s general manager Yoon Gihwan. Woosung knew he made a mistake. Until yesterday, he was the head of a department. He used to be the senior member, but now he was a 26-years old newbie. Woosung got up quickly and bowed.

“Oh hello. My name is Kang Woosung. It’s my first day so I got confused. I apologize.”

“You need to be quick around here or else you’re out. Do a good job, alright?”

“Of course.”

Yoon Gihwan asked Park Junwoo and Kim Yonggun to join them.

“Manager Park and Assistant manager Kim, this is the new employee. Say hello. Teach him well.”

“Hello. My name is Kang Woosung.”

“I’m Manager Park Junwoo.”

“I’m Assistant manager King Yonggun.”

Woosung smiled. He worked with them for a year here. He used to drink with them often and complain about Yoon Gihwan. He remembered the good times. Yoon Gihwan glared at him.

“You look relaxed. Is it because you’re so confident about your skills?”

Woosung continued to smile and answered.

“Haha of course. I overheard about some problems with login. Should we work on that?”

10 years ago on this day, someone else fixed this problem but this time, he could do it himself. At Woosung’s confidence, Yoon Gihwan frowned. Others around had the same unhappy expressions. They saw him as an overconfident arrogant pup.

***

The first thing to complete when developing a new program was to create a development environment setup. You had to install the visual studio, set the library version, and download and build the code from SVN. For someone new to programming, this would take hours.

You had to know which version of the program was being used, check the account for SVN login, and know which code to download. You also had to know how to build and get each step checked by a senior member. This was why it took so long.

If someone uploaded a wrong code to SVN and the final version reached the customers, negative feedback would bombard them.

But Woosung was not new to this.

With his experience, he skipped all the unnecessary steps. He installed the program, found and downloaded the code from the SVN, and built it.

It took about 20 minutes. He did it quick asking no one for help. Staring in disbelief, Yoon Gihwan asked Park Junwoo.

“Manager Park… did you already show this guy how to do this?”

Park Junwoo, wide-eyed, shook his head. Kim Yonggun was asked the same question.

“How about you, Assistant manager Kim?”

Kim Yonggun had the same answer. Woosung worked fast and said, “We are good till this step. Now let’s see… if we are having a login problem…”

He searched his memories and found the answer. He knew the exact problem because when he used to work here, Park Junwoo and Kim Yonggun shared all their information. Woosung spotted the problem on the 132nd line of the file LoginView.cpp on the visual studio program.

“You said the problem was you couldn’t log in when you entered the ID and password and the program wouldn’t respond?”

Park Junwoo and Kim Yonggun nodded.

“The problem is that on the server, it’s being processed as trim so it looks normal but on HTS screen, it’s different. The ID and PW the user typed appeared different from the information on the server.”

Park Junwoo asked Kim Yonggun.

“Is that correct?”

“It’s definitely possible. The outsourcing company asked us to add this scenario to increase security. We didn’t think it necessary, so we didn’t check it thoroughly.”

“So does that mean we didn’t even test this part?”

Kim Yonggun answered nervously.

“The thing is…. As you know, our deadlines moved up. We prioritized and tested only the major parts. We planned on checking the rest later but we didn’t have the time… We may have missed a few things.”

Park Junwoo exhaled. Yoon Gihwan roared in anger.

“What? We already distributed the product and you’re telling me this now? What are you going to do? People already downloaded the program, so what are we going to do?”

Woosung gave a brief answer.

“First, we need to make the login register as a login error. We can add the problem to the other patches. During HTS execution, the current version will be checked and upgraded. We will then recommend to the customers how they should download the newest version. This won’t be a big deal.”

To Woosung’s calm solution, the three became speechless. Has there ever been a new programmer who could be this cool and skillful?

Never in Yoon Gihwan’s 20 years of programming experience.

Never in Park Junwoo’s 10 years of programming experience.

Never in Kim Yonggun’s 4 years of programming experience.

They have never seen someone like him. Woosung wasn’t done yet though.

“I only had a quick glimpse of the program, but I already noticed that there was no test code either. Why don’t I create a test code now? It would be better to do this than change the actual program.”

Test code.

When a program developed, you created a code to test out the program as a trial rather than checking every single steps and function. For example, for an android app, if you checked every function one by one, it would take too long and you may make a mistake. Test code was a better and quicker method.

“You can do that?”

Woosung nodded. The three behind him swallowed audibly.