My Heart Beats Faster: Larisa's Programmes

I had settled down to work in Silicon Valley. After ten years of marriage, it turned out that there was a little more to romance than simply putting on the right outfit, and heading out for a pas-de-deux with my dancing partner, but I learned to be happy on my own. I raised my daughter and joined the small local “Ohlone Symphony” as a low-ranking second cello. I also visited the San Francisco Opera House innumerable times to listen to the professional cellists play the classic compositions, and watch toe-shoes turn on the sprung hard wood stage in performances like Swan Lake, Giselle, Rodeo and – well a whole shelf of my living room bookcase holds my scrapbooks filled with old programmes.

This month I'm working on the Kindle edition of "My Heart Beats Faster in Past Times", an Imperial Russia-based time-travel romance novella with music and ballet themes.

Bug in the Works OR Butterfly Workin'

This Golden Gate Park butterfly doesn't appear to be troubled by problems in her code

Go ahead and click on the picture for a more in-depth view of her world

I've been working away with the Objective-C programming language and the piece of software called Interface Builder.  Those are, of course, the  tools used to write apps for ipads, ipods and iphones. In my case, I'm still learning to do that.

I was up against a particularly nasty little bug in my program and finally, huzzah!, I found it. It reminded me of the  story from the old days, I mean the REALLY old days, kids. It dates back to around World War II. It's the origin of why programmers call problems in the workings of their software, 'bugs'. You all know the old story, right? The engineers had been tussling with some problem that was keeping the huge machine from doing it's thing. My college professor, Harry Huskey remembered those days. He had worked on the EINIAC. "Those vacuum tubes",  Professor Huskey told us. "they were always blowing, and we had to run around that huge room, swapping them out."  

So the problem-solvers on this day had been swapping out vacuum tubes, scratching their heads and dismantling things. Finally after days? hours? (depends on who's telling the story), they found the problem. A dead bug was found deep within the recesses of the machine. The programmers were so happy to find the problem, that they pasted the dead bug into the big ledger in which they noted their progress on the project. "Bug in the works", someone noted.

And of course, ever since then, a programmer works to find the bugs in her works. Because surely the problem couldn't be something SHE did.