Laura Gilbert - Speaking in Code

 

 

In the anatomy of a computer program, there are three parts. There's the input that the user has to put, and then there's the processing of that input via whatever algorithm is in place and then the program hopefully produces some output. So, when life here gets overwhelming or messy, which is pretty much always, sometimes I like to frame things in relation to these three steps. 

 

For instance, I'm on the train and someone says hi to me, that would be the input. And then, I process it via my own algorithm, which is somewhat Dr. Seuss machine-esque and I think, okay, well, I haven't seen this person in a long time, but I'm getting off at the next stop. So, any conversation I start is going to be meaningless, but how do I convey to her that I actually do care about what she's been doing. 

 

Maybe I should suggest coffee, but that'll sound like an empty promise, which it probably is because I'm a huge flake, because I can't keep. That's why we haven't talked to each other in so long, because I've let this friendship dive. Because I can't commit to anything that's why I'm wasting the best years of my life in this dead-end job and I can't. [audience laughter] And now, I have to say something, because she knows I'm having an existential crisis on the train. So, that's the algorithm. [audience laughter] 

 

And then, I produce the output which is, “Oh, hey.” [audience laughter] So, perhaps, this does not demonstrate my ability as a computer programmer, but I am apt when I program in Java, because I took a lot of computer science classes. At the high school, I went to computer programming competitions and I just loved the irrefutable logic of code in what is otherwise like this anarchist acid trip, completely abstract thing of high school. So, it should come as no surprise that my first and only relationship in high school was with computer science boy. It went exactly as you would imagine. We only communicated in binary. [audience laughter] We would hold hands, while we were petting my dogs. So, we would just submerge in the fur and then touch hands and then freeze. [audience laughter] 

 

And the kissing function, we had not debugged yet, so we didn't do a lot of that. And the input was me looking at him and the output was furious, blushing. I just remember being floored that someone liked me. And so, that translated into this enormous, overwhelming foreign data that I couldn't really process. And so, when we split up, because we went to different colleges, I was not devastated, because I just remember trying to figure out this algorithm for how I was going to process like, “How did some this mystery, this data? How did he like me?” 

 

The funny thing about computers, is that they don't need to be loved. And the funny thing about people who relate to computers, is that you start to subscribe to the same view. And so, I carried that unprocessed data all through college, accepted, no new input, thank you very much. And then, that leads us to what I like to call the syntax error incident of 2012, [audience laughter] where I was at my cousin's wedding and I was enjoying the anonymity that comes with being a guest at a wedding, because nobody really cares what you say at a wedding. They ask questions, blah, blah, blah. “What do you do? Who are you?” Immediately forget what they're saying. 

 

So, I'm pretending to be wildly successful when they ask what I'm doing in New York City, the Big Apple. I'm not saying that I'm wearing a hand me down dress from my mom's friend and I'm definitely not saying that my shoes are from a literal thrift store. And then, I meet this guy. In his introduction, he's a friend of the bride, he says that he's a Java developer who works at an online investment company. That was the input. 

 

And no matter how many times you run yourself through test cases, you're going to come upon situations where you produce a wildly unexpected outcome, errors is what we call those. [audience laughter] And an outcome that makes you immediately quick the run of the program and you go through your personality line by line and you figure out, where in the Sam Hill did this happen? [audience laughter] And so, he gave me the input. And without missing a beat, where did this algorithm come from, I responded with my output and I said, realizing this handsome stranger was also a computer programmer, I said, “Oh, well, system.out.printline, [“Hey”]; [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]

 

Which I spoke to him a line of code that would literally print the word, hey. And then, I entered an infinite loop of regret. [audience laughter] So, I exited the conversation swiftly, and I turned around, and I walked away and I thought to myself, okay, well, that occurred. [audience laughter] But when you have an experience where you are so yourself like that, you have to stop feeding yourself that bullshit input that's like my algorithm needs to be changed in order to be lovable. You start to feed yourself this thing that's like, “Okay. Well, I'm the kind of girl who opens flirtatious interactions with a line of code and possibly that's lovable.” 

 

I don't even want to tell the end of the story, because the point has already been made that everyone has a lovable algorithm. But incidentally, this boy is now my fiancé and we're writing this error filled short circuiting program line by line, but we're debugging it. Thank you.