Translator: Dreamscribe
As soon as Seo-ha completed the basic algorithm design, the developnt progressed without a hitch.
Two more whiteboards were brought into the Bit Forge club room.
Yeon-woo volunteered as the PM (Project Manager), and Jun-gi and Do-hyun also attended etings as stakeholders.
Bit Forge began operating in full project mode.
On each whiteboard, arrows, circles, and bolded keywords steadily accumulated.
[Algorithm Design, Simulation → Seo-ha]
[Concurrency Handling → Jong-uk Team]
[UI/UX → Na-ri Team]
[Testing → Do-hyun, Jun-gi Feedback]
Yeon-woo began writing out roles on the board as if to announce the start of the project.
“This week, let’s focus on building the frawork. The goal is to get each function working properly.”
Developnt proceeded surprisingly smoothly.
In a typical project, there are constant small and large conflicts between planning and implentation. But this ti, it was different.
That was because Seo-ha had already paved every path. As a result, Bit Forge could begin developnt with a clear image and roadmap of the app in mind.
“No conflict when three users pressed at the sa ti. Confird.”
“Notification reservation succeeded. There was one crash in battery-saving mode.”
Seo-ha had simplified the complex UI of the existing app down to just two buttons.
‘Fastest Reservation, Most Fair Reservation.’
On the third day of developnt,
Checkmarks began to appear one by one on the role board.
“First concurrency scenario passed. How’s notification stabilization?”
At that mont, Jong-uk removed the earphones from his ears and raised his hand.
“When 20 people pressed it, two phones showed ‘Reservation Confird’ at the sa ti.”
The room froze.
How much ti would they have to invest to catch the bug?
But Seo-ha was here.
Without saying a word, he walked over to the monitor and scanned the logs. The screen flicked past quickly. Seo-ha, reading the logs at an incredible speed, found the cause.
“The server confird only one person. But two phones displayed the success toast at the sa ti. The client-side logic updated optimistically without waiting for the server response.”
Yeon-woo blinked in shock, unable to speak.
“W-wait a second! Did you just read the log? You’d normally need to run debugging tools for a long ti to catch that…”
When a bug occurs, a developer instinctively tries to reproduce the issue.
After that, they attach debugging tools and examine it. This process usually takes a considerable amount of ti.
‘Just from reading the log?’
Theoretically, it’s possible. But it was hard to believe.
Seo-ha looked at Yeon-woo with a puzzled expression, as if asking why he was reacting like that.
For him, logically deducing the cause of a problem was nothing special. It wasn’t like he was blindly guessing in math, there was actual evidence left in the form of logs.
When Seo-ha fixed the code, the bug disappeared imdiately.
“Should I just not major in computer science?”
Jong-uk muttered blankly to himself.
He had fallen behind a kid with just one week of developnt experience. It was so absurd that he couldn’t even feel ashad.
“It’s fine. There’s no one else like him.”
Jong-uk admitted that, unlike usual, Na-ri’s cocky comnt was actually quite comforting.
Night had deepened, but the club room lights were still on.
“Hey, log correction is done!”
“UI update applied.”
“Running the test cases.”
The sound of keyboards, spinning fans, and occasional bursts of laughter.
‘Laughter?’
Leaning back in his chair, Yeon-woo thought.
Developnt usually doesn’t go like this. Normally, everyone would be exhausted from fixing a single bug, or tensions would rise as bla was passed around.
But now?
It was flowing seamlessly, with every task proceeding exactly according to the tiline.
Right before his eyes, Seo-ha was writing formulas on the whiteboard again.
Now, no one doubted that those simple curves and equations could instantly solve even the most fatal problems.
For a mont, a flicker of self-doubt crossed Yeon-woo’s face. But soon he burst into laughter.
‘What was I even doubting? A genius who proved the Four Color Theorem obviously wouldn’t struggle with code logic.’
The sound of keyboards once again filled the Bit Forge club room with energy.
***
“Na-ri, do we really have to go with this UI?”
Yeon-woo carefully brought up the question.
But Na-ri didn’t even turn around and just kept moving the mouse.
On the screen floated a yellow duck icon.
It was a simple yet eye-catching design, drawn with rounded vector shapes. The eyes were just two dots, but when the cursor hovered over them, an animation played where they blinked awake.
Click.
When Yeon-woo pressed the reservation button, the duck flapped its wings.
And then the sound effect played.
Quack-
“Uh... Na-ri, I get that it’s cute, but this is the student council app.”
“I like it. It’s brand identity.”
Yeon-woo clutched his head.
“Then could we at least make the sound more normal? This might co off as too silly.”
“Nope. It’s a sound exclusively for reservation celebration.”
Jun-gi stepped in to diate between the two.
“I think it’s fine. What matters is that students like the app. If it’s cute, more of them will use it.”
Vice president Min Do-hyun also nodded.
“I think it’s good too. Just because it’s a student council app doesn’t an it has to look like a governnt office site.”
Encouraged by the positive reactions, Na-ri added another animation.
Click.
When the “Laundry Complete” notification was pressed, the yellow duck appeared next to a large laundry basket. Then, it picked up the laundry with its beak and trotted over on its little legs to place it in the dryer.
“Now it’s perfect.”
Na-ri spun her chair around and declared proudly to everyone.
***
All the bugs had been fixed, and the UI was finalized.
Even the test cases all showed green lights.
Only one item remained unchecked on the whiteboard checklist.
[Open Beta Service]
“Alright, let’s launch the beta.”
There had been no issues with the internal alpha version.
By standard procedure, they should run a closed beta with selected testers, but everyone in the room was full of confidence.
All critical bugs had been resolved, and every test case had passed. The simulation data was also showing stable figures.
Jun-gi said with a laugh,
“The rumors are already all over. Everyone’s expecting it, right? Let’s just launch it directly.”
Yeon-woo nodded.
“We’ve got a backup plan ready too.”
Seo-ha still couldn’t believe that the app he had designed was about to be released into the world.
Yeon-woo moved the mouse to upload the final build to the server.
Right before pressing the deploy button, the room was so quiet you couldn’t hear a breath.
“Seo-ha should do it. You’re the architect of this app.”
Yeon-woo pulled his hand away from the button.
“Oh! Yielding to the designer? Manager, you’re such a romantic!”
“I’m for it too!”
“Then I’ll do it.”
Seo-ha took a short breath, then grabbed the mouse.
Click-
The mont the deploy button was pressed, the progress bar at the top of the screen began to fill slowly.
[Deploying build....]
Yeon-woo murmured quietly.
“Using an app of this level just for school laundry reservations. It’s overkill, seriously overqualified.”
Everyone except Seo-ha felt the sa way.
Perhaps thanks to the advance notice from the student council, the download count shot up instantly.
“Passed twenty users.”
“Seventy now.”
“Oh, we passed a hundred.”
Seo-ha calmly stared at the screen and checked the logs.
Just as expected, traffic was being distributed stably. Only after confirming that all the designed systems were functioning properly did Seo-ha exhale in relief.
***
Anonymous board,
[This laundry app, is it really made by the student council?]
-The quality is way too high. Did they outsource it to a professional company or sothing?
└The student council made an announcent. Credits say Bit Forge & Yu Seo-ha.
└Apparently, Duck Lord did all the algorithm design.
└You're so slow to noticeㅋㅋ. I could tell just from the animation.
└True. I kind of accepted it as the school mascot without even realizing it ㅋㅋㅋ
└I do laundry every day, and it’s way more pleasant now. We only have to choose between two recomndations, so there’s no need to overthink it.
└That “quack” sound when we successfully reserve ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└I wish it went “Quack?” when it failed.
└The little wing flaps are cute too ㅋㅋ
The students began calling the laundry app “Quack-Quack.”
“Ah! I need to do laundry. Let check Quack-Quack real quick.”
“How many credits do you have?”
As the sound of “quack quack” echoed throughout the dorms, laughter erupted among passing students.
A week after the app was released,
Everything seed to be going smoothly, but then an unexpected issue arose.
At so point, the washing machine usage rate began to drop.
The reason was simple.
Even though the machines were completely empty, a particular group was monopolizing the popular evening ti slots.
When Seo-ha first saw the numbers, he couldn’t understand the situation. It was sothing that shouldn’t have happened if everyone acted rationally.
Seo-ha imdiately opened the server logs.
[19:00 - 21:00 Reservation Success → Building A, 3rd Floor Group]
[Multiple Cancellation Logs → Sa Users Repeating]
[ 1 Credit Earned]
From the continuous records, a clear pattern erged.
Soone would make a reservation, cancel it, and then another mber of the sa group would rebook the vacant slot. Since yielding a peak ti slot granted credits.
“....”
Seo-ha froze his fingers.
The algorithm was perfect.
Yielding earned rewards, tardiness brought penalties. It was a rule designed for fairness.
But that rule was being exploited like a ga by a few students. To them, yielding wasn’t an act of consideration but a ans to mine points.
Yeon-woo ca over and looked at the screen.
“They’re rotating within a group. Repeatedly canceling for each other, stacking credits, and monopolizing the golden ti slots.”
“I defined cancellation as yielding to simplify the system. I thought there would be no difference mathematically.”
“In real life, that’s called farming.”
Seo-ha felt an indescribable sadness.
His mathematical model was built on the premise that all humans act rationally for the common good.
But in reality, people deceive the system for personal gain.
Tap, tap.
Watching Seo-ha sullenly revising the code, Yeon-woo roughly scratched his head.
“Let’s not be too disappointed. There are far more people who follow the system.”
Seo-ha nodded as he looked at the screen.
“Yes, but I’ve learned that a system must leave no room for human desire to interfere.”
Yeon-woo thought it would have been better if Seo-ha had co to that realization just a bit later.
***
In a dark room,
The glow of the monitor faintly lit up Seo-ha’s face.
Seo-ha was watching the endless fall of binary digits.
The infinite stream of bits in his mind transford into numbers and symbols.
The 0s and 1s falling across the black screen gathered and scattered repeatedly, and at so point, they beca coordinates, then changed into graphs and functions.
Numbers that looked aningless to others took on structure within Seo-ha’s consciousness. And they returned to their original form.
Seo-ha looked at the screen and smiled faintly.
“You’re back, Ducky.”
The cascading wave of bits had stirred Ducky from slumber.
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