“Not user interfaces — interfaces between different components of your program, and your program and others. If you don't get them right your program's a mess.”

"That's the whole point of TCP/IP, only on a grand scale, isn't it?"

“You gotta think about it on all scales, I'm saying.

“Hi, I'm Kaitlyn Corbett, CS major, and I look forward to arguing with you in the future.”

"Welcome to the circle of curmudgeonly coders-hopeful!" He raises his can of Sprite. "I'm Teddy Greens."

Ralph Crishom, Miracle Davies ("call me Mira, hippie parents, you know"), and Samara Wilkens introduce themselves as well.

“Nice to meet you!” she says, with a vague attempt at eye contact around the circle. “Got any plans for the future besides curmudgeonhood?”

The score is two people who want to make games, one person who wants to go into AI, one who just shrugs, and Teddy who says, "I hope to write programs that actually help the world, one way or another. No idea what that might be yet, so for now it's just learning."

“Well, I've got a plan, wanna team up?”

"Well you'll have to sell me on the idea, but it's not out of the question."

“Okay!

“What's the biggest threat to civilization? Monsters. The big ones are the obvious unsolved problem but you know what the the small ones do? They destroy information. How do we know what we've lost? How do we know they're not destroying exactly what we need to fight them better?

“Sure, there are effective backup systems. But they're expensive, and vulnerable in their own ways, and people have to think the information is worth keeping around and actually get around to arranging for backups and — depending on the type of system — verifying that the backups are actually working.

“What if something important would be found by analysis of historical records that just rotted away? We need cheap, effective, universal backups. We need people looking at the little things, and sharing what they find.

“I've already got something that works — I see myself as here to learn how to make it a real, secure, scalable system. Though there's still the problem of convincing people to use it, which isn't exactly computer science.”

"Hm. Well, once you have all that extra information, data, knowledge that's been lost, you still have to make use of it. Analytics companies have a lot of work ahead of them already. And when you say 'I've got something that works'... There's a lot of levels that could be at. I can agree with the sentiment, though."

“What I've got is a distributed backup, file sharing, and forum system that runs on home computers — mine and my friends'. I know it will totally fail if anyone involved actually tries to break it.

“And yes, doing anything useful with the data is another not-CS problem. You need scientists for the big idea; I'm sticking to the smaller problem of at least making sure that anyone using the system can learn that the data exists and get in touch with others to collaborate.”

The other CS students have gotten into a conversation about game AI.

"I might need to learn more about what exactly it does. But I already have some shiny ideas."

“Like what?”

"Well, does everyone need a whole copy of everything? As long as there are a few copies - a few dozen or hundred copies if we have a large network - out there, even in pieces, little-used files can be retrieved on demand without taking up vast storage arrays."

“—okay, that could work, but you would need to make sure that the copies aren't accidentally, like, too close together, and make more if some get destroyed. That sounds complicated to maintain. Not like too complicated but just another thing that would have to be done.”

"You can turn maintenance tasks into algorithms with enough effort. And, uh, yeah, I'm sold on this idea. Toast to distributed storage?" He waggles the sprite can.

“To maybe saving the world and getting not very much of the credit!”

Nearly empty juice bottle and aluminum can: a very unmusical sound.

And he downs the remaining soda to finish the toast. "I think I'm going to go back to my dorm now. Exchange email addresses?"

“Sure!”

She pulls out her recorder. Stops to think.

“I should prrrobably start carrying around some variety of actual paper. Practice handwriting, because tests. And it makes more sense for writing down email addresses anyway. D'you have a notebook?”

"In fact, yes. Pens too." These items appear. He writes his email down and tears off a corner of paper to hand over.

She writes down her college-issued email address and another one. “This one feeds into my system, so it's less private than regular email. There isn't a whole lot of point to that yet outside of exercising the functionality, but hey.”

Her handwriting is legible but wandery and painstaking.

"Huh. I probably won't use that one, honestly. Anyway, bye!"

“Bye!”

This thing is probably kind of winding down, right? Right. Back to campus. Maybe she'll locate her classrooms while she's out and about.

The returning buses are predictably super crowded. Walking and finding her classrooms is a good plan - though most of them are on the north side of campus, closer to her dorm.

It's a nice day out, at least. The buildings are mostly pretty old, especially near the center of campus, and look it inside and out. The math building (Altgeld Hall) in particular looks like some kind of castle, with weird staircases, old fashioned desks and blackboards, and a maze of halls.

Siebel Center, the computer science building, is easily the most modern and nicest building of the ones she has classes in.

It would be entertaining if the math building had secret passages or was topologically interesting. She'll have to ask someone who would be amused by the question.

For now, she will return to her room and peruse her textbooks.

Well, go to her computer first and catch up on things. Oh hey it's dinnertime, let's not forget to eat.