He tirelessly wrote about his program on various forums and websites. He was avoided like a pariah, receiving downvotes and bans. But he persisted. A simple search would reveal that he had been roaming forums with his program almost since the dawn of the RuNet. He wrote about his wonder program almost around the clock without breaks for sleep. Such persistence is intriguing. It may even command some respect for the author's determination. Supporting him, I encountered unexpected aggression from the community, feeling like an outsider, just like him.
However, in private correspondence, the author agreed to share his program with me. For some reason, he only had a version for DOS, and it was for version 5.9.
As I went through the source code, I struggled to navigate the jumble of code and comments. The convoluted logic of the algorithm seemed to hide something more than just an array sorting algorithm. All these branches, methods, and constants formed an unclear picture, inaccessible to the average user. Tired of examining the source code, I decided to move on to the program itself.
I managed with great difficulty to gather and run it on virtual machine. The program's performance varied from run to run. On some datasets, it worked quickly, on others slowly, and on some, it outright refused to sort. After reviewing the logs, I began to feel a headache, and all sorts of silly thoughts started creeping in. Who am I, why am I doing this, what does it mean, who am I? I decided I needed to sleep…
I.
I understood how the program actually worked! I recalled its purpose; it was not about sorting those silly arrays. The program allowed me to copy my personality, my individuality.
For this, it was necessary to find someone who would show a bit of sympathy and agree to run the program on their machine. Sympathy was the key element for activation. Otherwise, the procedure for copying consciousness would be impossible. However, one should not multiply entities excessively, even such genius entities as myself. Habitually creating a new thread on yet another shabby forum, I began to write: "My program works and shows better results than all your mediocre algorithms..."
A minor issue was that I couldn't remember why I was doing all this, repeating it over and over again. However, that didn’t really matter; the important thing was that the program was working.
PS: All events and characters are fictional, any resemblance to names and events from reality is purely coincidental.
Source: habr.com
