Once upon a time, in late 2016, a student developer was working on what seemed like a straightforward assignment in JavaScript, using the Meteor framework. He had been using a hand-me-down laptop, passed on from relatives, and while it was developer quality, the important thing was that he hadn’t been around for the setup of the machine, nor the first year of its operating use. So when things went wrong - and this was the time that they did - the possible causes were myriad and mysterious. As he investigated the problems, each answer only raised more questions as still new problems emerged, and ultimately those questioned challenged the validity of whatever answer he had found. He was vexed.
It would eventually be discovered that the Windows Update tool had not been functioning for some time. While the absence of numerous important patches went a long way to explaining why several different things were each behaving improperly, this is not the story of that particular discovery. Rather, it is the story of several weeks before, when the student developer was entirely mystified. It is the week he felt like he was banging his head against a wall, and that that wall was part of an M.C. Escher diorama, containing a multitude of other walls in physically-impossible arrangement for his head to also bang against. It is a week in which he tried to lift his spirits, by imagining that his frustration (like any struggle?) could be recontextualized as a heartwarming coming-of-age tale. It was a time when he had begun to imagine pitching this tale as a screenplay to a pair of hollywood producers. All-in-all, he had gone slightly batty.
It is commonly believed that the producers in question were two of his cats.
Screenwriter: Thank you for this opportunity, I’ll get right into it. What we have here is a spin on the classic coming of age tale. Our screenplay begins with a chance encounter between our hero and destiny, when he meets a powerful being that fell from the sky, an exile from the Land of Stable Builds. Once one of many meteors, this particular one is destined - some say cursed - to be the fabled Meteorite.
Producer 1: I’m sorry, meteor, Meteorite?
S: Right, the Meteorite is a meteor that has crashed to Earth.
Producer 2: In the books, doesn’t the Meteorite crash several times? It seemed to be happening almost constantly?
S: Glad to have a fan of the source material! And that’s the case here too, but the screenplay glosses over that part a bit.
S: You see, our villain is the evil wizard that lives in the Tower of Seven Windows. Our hero, together with Meteorite, believes that somewhere in that wizard’s tower lies the key to restoring Meteorite to its rightful place in the sky. But the wizard has stolen the Meteorite’s magic weapon, a sword named Mongo.
P2: Can you explain the bit about the magic words?
S: Well, the sword Mongo is almost like a part of Meteorite. Usually the Meteorite just calls out “meteor mongo” and the weapon appears, but the wizard’s evil magic has severed that tie.
S: So the pair set out, and find a new weapon at their local running shop, and this too they name Mongo. But the old weapon was far superior, powered by magical energies called data objects that Mongo was able to draw from the world around it.
P1: From anywhere?
S: Mostly it would draw power from Meteorite’s magical armor or the shell of command. But unable to power the new weapon, the pair venture into the dark and wooded forums seeking answers. The woodland creatures are tricksters, though, and give their secrets only in riddles. But the hero is able to repair the cracks in the weapon’s magical scabbard, made from a mongo shell, and the weapons begins to glow with an admittedly faint light.
P1: That’s fairly convoluted, I’m not sure audiences will go for it.
P2: There are a lot of small obstacles that just lead from one to another, maybe would could try it as a montage?
S: And so, the pair, weaker Mongo in hand, storm the Tower of Seven Windows, only to find, it is a trap. Perhaps it was the weaker weapon that left them vulnerable, perhaps the trap was unavoidable. But no sooner do they step inside than they are caged within an eof!
P2: Now, Meteorite and the hero are supposed to be clever, wouldn’t they see the trap coming?
S: It was an unexpected eof.
P2: Ah.
S: So, imprisoned beneath the tower, our hero plans his escape. He doesn’t know where Meteorite is being imprisoned, but he uses his VirtualBox to jimmy the lock, and secret his way from the dungeons into the Caves of Linux. But the caves, too, are full of dangers.
S: He encounters his old friends Java and IntelliJ, that he knew from his childhood in the shadow of the tower. But here in the caves, they have been turned to stone, and won’t wake up.
S: Soon, the cave creatures take pity. Creatures called system variables tell the hero of separate paths in the caves that will lead to a cure, but each PATH is a dead end.
S: Their king, the command line, tries to free them from their frozen state by bringing in more copies of the statues from afar, and unpackaging these statues himself. But each new statue is as lifeless as the next. Finally, a wise sudo named Apt-Get shows the hero how to unlock a door in the back of the cave, which was disguised as another eof trap. There, they find the gorgon that froze the hero’s friends, and negotiate their release.
P1: So, here’s my problem. We’re in the caves, and the screenplay just, ends? There are a whole lot of obstacles but no finale. Shouldn’t there be a big finale confrontation with the wizard?
S: We’re focusing less on that, and more on the coming-of-age aspects of the hero’s journey. You know, learning to deal with challenges, and all the friends you make along the way…
P2: Plus, in the extended lore the masters of the Towers of Many Windows are said to be immortal…
P1: Alright, alright! Forget I asked. But I thought this was a movie about restoring the Meteorite? We haven’t even seen that character since Act 2. Isn’t that a little unsatisfying?
S: Oh, we’re hoping for a sequel.