I, Jiang Liu, was a senior programmer at a major tech company. The moment I dropped dead at my desk, my screen still displayed “OutOfMemoryError.”
I opened my eyes and found myself transmigrated into the body of an outer disciple and formation master at Qingyun Sect.
This lousy sect was dirt poor. Its only valuable asset was the mountain-guarding formation passed down by its ancestors. Unfortunately, it was a three-hundred-year-old legacy pile of crap, riddled with bugs. It crashed every three days, and suffered a major failure every five. The spirit stones burned up with each restart could have fed the whole sect for a month.
My senior brothers scratched their heads around the formation. “We can’t make sense of the Grandmaster’s setup. We don’t dare touch it. Let’s just make do.”
I stood off to the side and took a look
Wait a minute.
Isn’t this a memory leak?
And this one’s an infinite loop.
Damn, there aren’t even any comments? Who named these variables? a1, a2, a3? No one’s refactored this in three hundred years?
I took a deep breath and quietly rolled up my sleeves.
I may not know much, but cleaning up a legacy pile of crap is my specialty.
Later
The sect leader stared at my “Performance Optimization Proposal for the Mountain-Guarding Formation.” “What does this ‘requirements review’ mean?”
A neighboring sect sent a spy to learn our secrets. He reported back, “They hold a ‘stand-up meeting’ every morning and talk about ‘today’s tasks’ and ‘blockers’...”
An enemy patriarch attacked our gates, only to be blasted to smithereens by the “automated counterattack module” I had designed. With his dying breath, he stared wide-eyed at me. “What kind of demonic art is this?”
I waved a hand modestly. “It’s no demonic art. Just a simple if-else.”
