Coder Lee YongHo – Chapter 81: Tutor (1)
Silicon Valley.
As a region in San Francisco, California, USA, it was named as such due to the fact that silicon chip production companies were gathered here.
However, what YongHo was surprised at was something else.
No matter how hard he looked, there wasn’t a place with a rent lower than 2 million won (converted to Korean currency, ≈1740 USD) a month. And what there were were all tattered down, perhaps due to the low pricing.
In the end, he decided to live in Dave’s house until he found a room he was satisfied with.
After moving all his luggage, YongHo asked the most urgent question.
YongHo stuttered his words he read down from an internet translator.
“Yeah, a person to teach me English.”
“Jessie can do that. Jessie.”
“Yes, Jessie likes languages a lot. As far as I know, she enjoys learning other countries’ languages other than just programming language.”
When he heard Dave’s words, YongHo became curious. If he could learn English from Jessie, then the money to hire a tutor would decrease.
The basic tax rate on his monthly salary was 25%.
He had to grab Jessie.
Dave spoke long, but what YongHo heard were just few words. ‘Korean’, ‘Interest’, ‘Talk’. Anyway, he interpreted as ‘talk to her’.”
Coincidentally, Jessie’s house was not far away from Dave’s house.
(T/N: From now on, it may be really confusing, as Jessie speaks in poor Korean, which I have to translate poor Korean in to poor English(?)…and YongHo speaks in native-level Korean, which I have to translate to native-level English(?)… wtf)
YongHo was looking at Jessie with a nervous expression. It was unknown how many times he had to look things up on the internet to explain. He searched words in the internet to confirm if he spoke properly and for sentences, he explained using a machine translator.
Jessie replied with Korean, though lacking. YongHo could only be surprised.
“I interested in Korean. I’m good.”
Okay.
Now that he was worried less about English problems, YongHo thought that he just needed to work.
The main task of the BI team which YongHo belonged to was algorithm tuning. It could be said that the final objective was to induce customers into buying more products by analyzing the patterns of the users through the company website.
This was how Dave introduced YongHo to the company people. The career experience of being first on the NetFlax Prize were engraved into their minds.
First conference, YongHo couldn’t say anything. It was difficult to just understand what they were saying, but speaking was even harder.
“Nothing is much. They say hello.”
Dave had a positive attitude towards YongHo so he conversed with him with body language. Although it took a long time, Dave tried to understand him and listen to him.
As it was only the beginning, an atmosphere, where they understood and accepted him to an extent, was created.
YongHo was a person who even Dave, who was acknowledged by Jungle, recommended. Although there were many cases where he mad people awkward due to his pure actions, his ability alone was exceptional.
Dave tapped YongHo, who was spacing out amidst all the uninterpreted language.
Dave urged YongHo, who was just nodding his head like a doll. It seemed that they were urging him to explain about the algorithm that took 1st place.
He couldn’t explain. It wasn’t that YongHo had become smarter. He could just see bugs happening in a program.
This was a field that YongHo was weakest with. If he had such a genius ability, then he would have left Shinseki long time ago.
There was no way he could explain something he had to stutter even in Korean in English.
Dave, who didn’t even know what YongHo was thinking, asked with shiny eyes.
If he couldn’t do anything like this, then it was obvious what kind of situation would occur.
The method YongHo chose was writing down the codes.
Normally, algorithms are expressed in simple mathematical formulae when explaining. Programmers would code while looking at that.
YongHo looked for the bug history on his bug window and wrote down the code he used for the NetFlax Prize.
The people inside the conference room nodded their heads quietly while looking at the whiteboard. The 2m wide whiteboard became full with the code that YongHo wrote down.
“What are you doing YongHo, you’re even implementing it here?”
However, YongHo’s situation was different.
He wanted to shut Dave’s mouth. When he first met Dave, there was a precondition that YongHo couldn’t speak English. Moreover, Son SeokHo was with them so the questions Dave was interested in were covered to an extent.
Moreover, after writing the code, he had to confront 10 peak-level developers and not just Dave. YongHo was trying to stall for time. He intended for not even questions to come out.
Soon, cold sweat flowed down his back to the point that his entire back became wet.
Tap.
It wasn’t just one or two lines of code, so just writing them all down took him 1 hour.
“YongHo, from next time onwards, please tell us in simple formulae. Code is too long. Or you can use pseudocode(a code that’s not a code, and only used in explanations).”
When YongHo sat down exhausted, Dave came up front. Then, he pointed the whiteboard where YongHo wrote the code with his hand.
Senior Data Engineer.
Looking at him up front, he was completely different from the him who was playing around all the time.
The conference ended barely after Dave came up front.
YongHo was trapped in one thought after he left the conference room.
Although he also needed to work on his English, YongHo felt the desperate need to study about algorithms.
He wouldn’t have known if he didn’t do the algorithm study in Korea.
The level of ‘difficult’ that YongHo thought and Dave thought was different. If he asked Dave, then he might show a ‘you didn’t even know this?’ reaction. (T/N: That’s not a reason.)
YongHo was afraid that such belief would collapse.
He needed somewhere to ask what he didn’t know. There was no time to wait to upload a question and wait for a reply.
He had to go to work.
YongHo messaged Jeff Done through SNS that day.
-Greeting, sir Jeff Done. Do you remember the meeting we had in the Koogle Design Award last time? I moved my workplace to Silicon Valley of America. If you have time, I want to talk to you about life here in Silicon Valley and about programming.
The king of optimization that YongHo knew was NASA but there was no connection between them.
Jeff Done.
YongHo didn’t know but he was already a celebrity.
If Jeff Done is the one doing the optimizing, then a result is returned even before running.
Before the compiler(A program that translates high-level language to machine language) throws a warning, Jeff Done throws a warning at the compiler first.
A unique programmer who implements a web server using one line of code. (T/N: That’s bullshit)
And such stories were on the internet.
YongHo, who was thinking negatively for a moment, shook his head.
Before he came to America, he felt like the resolve he made when his mind was burning white, was being diluted.
If he didn’t keep engraving it, he forgot it in no time, and abided to reality. If one didn’t live as one thought, then one thought as he lived – this saying was true.
Countless people were listed as friends. Bland words were shared through SNS so Jeff Done was flicking the screen quickly with his thumb.
He felt like he heard this a lot from somewhere. He heard countless names every day so if it wasn’t important then he wouldn’t even remember it.
Jeff Done read the article that YongHo left on his rocking chair. There was nothing special about its content.
‘Koogle design award, that’s it.’
With the thought that he may as well do this properly since he was doing it, he submitted one optimized on the first indroid.
‘Hm… Shall I meet him for once?’
If it was someone at YongHo’s level, he felt that it wouldn’t be bad to talk.