God of Money

Yoon Gihwan’s lesson ended at dinner time.

“Phew, I have told you everything I know.”

They started at 11 am and took a brief lunch break. In total, the lesson took 8 hours. Yoon Gihwan was sweating by the end. Woosung thanked him.

“Thank you so much. You really helped me today.”

Woosung was sincere. Yoon Gihwan sat down and asked.

“What about dinner?”

“Well, I need to get home.”

The now disappointed Yoon Gihwan mumbled behind his breath.

“I wanted to have a drink with you but… I guess you need to go.”

Was Yoon Gihwan always like this? 10 years ago in his past life, Woosung, Park Junwoo, and Kim Yonggun used to hate him. As Woosung got to know him better, he could see a different side of Yoon Gihwan. He can’t believe it at first, but Woosung was beginning to like him.

Woosung fully recovered from last night’s drinking, so he obliged the man’s offer.

“Well then, just one drink with dinner.”

7 pm.

They only had burgers for lunch, so he was getting hungry. Yoon Gihwan brightened and answered.

“Of course. Pork belly and one drink.”

What Woosung learned from his ten years of being an earnest employee was one drink never remained just one.

Again, they drank till late into the night. It wasn’t a loud drinking party, however. It was one where they enjoyed their glasses together in a quiet display of camaraderie as Yoon Gihwan talked about difficulties of living apart from his family.

He talked about his son.

He talked about his take on the company and his difficulties at work.

Woosung was such a good listener that Yoon Gihwan couldn’t stop talking. Woosung was sympathetic, especially regarding the difficulty of being a working man.

Woosung could also see similarities between them. Yoon Gihwan was let go from Daeyang System because the son of Daeyang’s CEO betrayed him.

“So what’s your plan?”

Yoon Gihwan had been curious about it for a while now and he now got the nerve to ask.

“First, I will finish developing GUI Test tool and lead a successful consultation.”

“Algorithm trading is after that?”

“Yes.”

“How about the test tool development?”

“I think I should be able to finish it tomorrow. I will show you the final work on Monday morning.”

Yoon Gihwan smiled happily.

“I love it! We might sell that tool elsewhere too, so do your best.”

“Oh, I plan on uploading it on the Source Forge for free.”

“What? Source Forge? That’s a free software website!”

Sourceforge.net was a web-based service offering developers to control and manage free software projects. It was the biggest sharing site before the introduction of github.com, which at this time was a startup site and haven’t got many users yet. Woosung planned on uploading on GitHub too.

“I plan on providing it to the public for free. I meant to tell you on Monday… Please make sure the boss understands.”

“What? Do you think this is a charity? Why would you give it for free?”

They would include this function in the Visual Studio within two years, so there was no benefit for the company to hold on to the plugin.

“I don’t mean to be a charity worker. There is a good reason for it. Think of it as a bait.”

It was a bait to attract other developers.

It was easy to buy talented programmers, but he didn’t have the money yet. There were many things he wanted to and needed to make, unfortunately, he was just a man.

Good stories attracted good people. Good codes could attract good developers.

Woosung drank the last shot and continued.

“Please make them understand. This needs to be available freely.”

“Fine. Let’s do that. If you want, I will make it happen.”

Yoon Gihwan tried to get rid of his disappointment and stood up. Between the two, they drank three bottles of soju that night.

***

When Woosung returned home, he didn’t go to sleep and sat right away in front of the computer.

“If I want to complete it by tomorrow, I better finish what I started this morning.”

Click.

Click, click.

As Woosung types fast, the screen quickly filled with c++ language.

/**

@date 2008/02/03

@author woo.sung.kang

*/

#include <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>

#include “Macro/MacroTrace.h”

#include “Event/EventTrace.h”

He applied all the reference libraries, and then…

GUITestTool::GUITestToll(const TestConfig::

TestConfiglDetail))

Woosung continued without hesitation. When he was coding, he could feel the difference in his ability the most. 10 years ago, he couldn’t work this fast.

‘I would have spent most of my time thinking or researching on the internet.’

Even after he became the Chief of the Server Department at Bitmain, it remained the same. To complete a single program, he need to allocate extensive energy to search the open sources. He usually ended up using different parts of whatever others had already made. If he couldn’t find anything he needed, he wrote the codes himself, but it used to take him ages.

However, now he could feel everything was different. His brain worked in an unprecedented way. In the past, he would have spent 50% of the time thinking, while now he would only utilize 20%.

“Phew… now I just have to finish up tomorrow.”

He filled the monitor with new CPP files.

3 am.

Woosung went to bed at last.

***

On the monitor, the arrow clicked the button automatically without the need to move the mouse. The price boxes filled themselves too. The program test on HTS went on like this, they are automatic.

-login test complete.(10%)

-order test complete.(11%)

….

-chart test complete(50%)

-user info test complete(60%)

….

Test complete(100%)

After the test completed, Park Junwoo swallowed.

“Did you really make this all by yourself, Woosung?”

Woosung nodded. Kim Yonggun reacted similarly. They were all shocked.

“From now on, the screen test will involve adding more functions to this.”

Park Junwoo called in Yoon Gihwan.

“G-general manager, did you see this? This program can test everything automatically, including the login, transactions, and speed trading.”

“Yes, I saw it a few days ago.”

Park Junwoo couldn’t believe his eyes.

“This is amazing. It used to take us hours at a time manually inputting individual numbers to test things, but now everything will be so much easier.”

Yoon Gihwan answered disappointedly.

“I know. And he plans to upload it for free on Source Forge.”

This revelation surprised Park Junwoo this most. His voice cracked louder than before.

“What? For free?”

Woosung answered calmly.

“I was meaning to provide the codes so others can add more functions themselves. I don’t have the time myself to continue developing this.”

“W-Woosung, but that’s not right. This is an amazing function and it’s the company’s property…”

“But if he insists, it’s ok.”

Woosung looked at Yoon Gihwan.

“Well, let’s go then. People are waiting.”

“Sure, let’s go. Whatever you say, boss.”

Yoon Gihwan grumbled as he stood up.

The big meeting room was filled with developers. At the front was a giant screen with a title, “Agile Method User Guide.”

People murmured.

“What was the name of the consulting group? Was it Daesan? Have you heard of this company?”

“It’s the one taking care of the channel system. They got the contract because of Daeyang. Nuri Finances should have hired a better company.”

Most of them were unhappy about this meeting.

“I heard a newbie will lead this presentation. How can anyone trust a new grad?”

“This project will fail, and it will cost more to fix it.”

“I heard the manager of the IT team is a strange man. It’s hard enough for us to make the codes, but for us to make test codes too? That’s not fair.”

Everyone was complaining. ST’s Nam Kyungsang was especially vocal about his unhappiness.

“He doesn’t even know anything about agile, and now he will provide a consultation? This is ridiculous. I wouldn’t be surprised if that last bug was also planted by Daesan.”

“No way.”

“Think about it. It was odd he found the code errors on the server easily. You can’t be that quick unless you wrote the codes yourself. And what about the thing he mentioned about our library? It makes little sense unless he made it happen.”

Suddenly, Kwon Hyungeun shushed Nam Kyungsang. The door opened, Yoon Gihwan and Woosung walked in. The room quieted down, and Woosung grabbed the microphone.

“Oh, hello. I am Woosung Kang from Daesan System, and I will lead this consulting presentation.”

The room was quieter, but most developers weren’t paying attention. Nam Kyungsang sniggered at this show of disrespect.

‘I knew it.’

Woosung calmly continued.

“You are all probably wondering about two things. First, what can a newbie Woosung Kang do?”

Woosung paused fixing their attention towards him.

“Second, how effective would my idea be? I will answer the first question.”

The next PPT slide appeared, and it was filled with Woosung’s recent accomplishments.

He fixed the account system balance problem, created a new function called speed trading, and completed GUI Test Tool.

“And this is the test tool I created in just a month of working at Daesan. For short, it’s called GTT. I will show you how it works.”

As the program started, the room became silent. Both Yoon Gihwan and Park Junwoo were surprised. One can see the shock in the faces of other developers too.

All of this in one month.

Kwon Hyungeun swallowed and watched the program.

“This is how the test works. I have completed it, and from now on, we will test the HTS screen using this tool. Let me now answer your second question.”

The next slide appeared.

-Daesan System Negative point 0. Positive point 5.

-ST Data System Negative point 4. Positive point 0.

-M3 Soft Negative point 3. Positive point 1.

-Daeyang System Negative point 0. Positive point 2.

“These results came from the point system so far. Haha, I don’t want to brag, but I might be the reason why Daesan did so well.”

It was a joke, but the audience was still in shock as their gazes remained fixed at Woosung.

“Now, I will begin the actual presentation.”

The developers’ eyes sharpened as they scuffle around trying to look for a pen and paper to take notes.