1,000 Lines of Code

I often say (to whoever will listen) that I am lucky enough to have achieved my purpose in life at such an early age. And if I keep it up, at this rate, I might be able to pull it off a time or two again before I die.

Of course, I would be remiss at this point if I did not note that the aforementioned previous purpose in life had something to do with the writing of Minataur Tails: my favourite book in all the worlds and one to which I happen to own the distribution rights in the Earthen Vortex, lucky me.

So, anyway, shameless self promotion aside, that tome weighs in at something like 160,000 words at 250 words a page, 40 lines a page... um, give me a second... well, I don't know exactly, but I'm pretty sure it's a lot longer than what my second life's work will come out to be. You see, I'm guessing, I'll be lucky, if I manage to pound out 1,018 lines of computer code that have some sort of long term meaning.

Of course, I'm not sure what those lines will be, what they'll say, do, enable, or even what language they'll be in. But I'm pretty sure when the robots look back on my life they'll say something along the lines of:

"Right there!  That sub-function inner-call, thing of beauty!"
"I hear he wrote some pretty good speculative fiction, as well."
"Oh, yeah.  That was nice.  But this."
"Yeah, I got to admit, that list comprehension is pretty sweet."

And the robots will line up to download the code; and maybe if their personality circuits are left at the factory pre-set, will chuckle a bit about their portrayal in the aforementioned Minataur Tails:

"First morbidly depressed robot in post-sentenial fiction, I hear."
"Um, I'm pretty sure, old Dougie was first."
"Nope.  Says right here in black and white, what more do you need."

A robot after my own heart, which just might be what those 1,018 lines of code are comprised of, a computer based sonnet to pass the test of time...

"Or, you know, an incrementally faster split-sort."
"Got that right.  I'm reforking my entire tree tonight with that sucker!"
"You don't know what those words mean at all, do you?"
"Who cares!  Split sort the fork!  Sign me up!"

Who am I to argue?
I say, Give the Robotic Overlords of the Future what they want.

"Then get busy with the fork and split the short."
"Somebody's shorted something around here, that's for sure."
"Split short the fork!  I'm forking the short."

And there in we have the answer to why some folks prefer private server sessions...

"I'm sporking the short, split the fork.  Yeah!  And don't you forget it."

"No, seriously, you found some more pre Dragon Bound speculative light fiction from the master?"
"Keep your bolts on, junior.  He was just a human and not a very bright one at that."
"Obviously, you haven't read his stuff yet."
"At a thousand pages a click, I haven't got time for that tripe, son."
"Don't know what you're missing."
"There there, now just run along and enjoy the link and let us grown ups compile in piece."