Lately, my blog's been getting a surprising amount of love. Funny thing is, not many people write these days, but they sure still drink.
A bunch of folks have been asking me out for drinks, each with their own story to tell. Last weekend, a colleague, the kind who rarely says more than two words at work, suddenly invited me for a beer. This guy is strange in the best way: quiet most of the time, but give him a drink and he turns into a living archive of weird, fascinating old stories. Honestly, he's kind of magnetic when he's a little tipsy.
This is Allen, he is a compiler engineer in our team. His job is to use YACC to convert system configuration files into C code and run at the Unix kernel level. It’s a niche skill at a time everyone is jamming into Java space, yet it’s easy since configuration semantic and format didn't change that often. That gave Allen plenty of time to play.
Allen is a typical engineer, always clade in shorts and t-shirt, white soccer socks and no shoes. He is always carrying a giant cup filled with only ice. Alien rarely chat with teammates, almost never on the project. But if you are asking him about his Porsche or car racing, his eyes suddenly lit up and can talk about it nonstop.
When I first met him, he only drove a red Honda CRV, a cute fun car. One day, he came into office with excitement - He just bought a Porsche 911. He sat in my office, and told me the entire saga with the dealer. Obviously, 911 was hot, remember that is late 90’s and the entire valley was bubbling up. Allen has been a frequent visitor to the showroom so dealers knew him. When that day the 911 arrived, Allen glued himself in the showroom, and literally to the 911. He wouldn’t leave until they sell him this car. The dealer didn’t like his dress (or the lack of such), but their prospective customers didn’t show up. So near the end of the day, the dealer had to agree sell the 911 to Allen.
Well, it seems the dealer was very much regretted to the deal. Unlike a normal buyer of a Porsche, Allen didn’t want any upgrade and add-on equipment, the dealer can’t make any fat profit. So the dealer told Allen that his finance won’t be approved unless he pays cash. To dealer’s surprise, Allen has been saving for this moment. In the end, the dealer was literally crying to see Allen drove off the 911.
At a later story, our VP of entering, a Dutch gentleman, has also been craving for the newly released Baxter. He came back with the story was that Allen’s purchase was the worst deal they made in their entire existence and the sale manager ended up resigning the following day.
In the end, Allen wasn’t just buying a car, he was executing a transaction like he wrote his code: no fluff, no bloat, just raw control.
Engineers like Allen don’t dress to impress, and they don’t talk unless it matters. But when they do act, it’s precise, unapologetic, and quietly devastating to anyone who underestimates them.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere, maybe that true elegance, in both code and life, comes not from polish, but from purpose.
