Nerd vs. Dealers

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.

https://www.gizvault.com/archives/nerd-vs-dealer