Healthy Ideas - 1

Sometimes, I really don’t know anymore.

–Beginning Basic Narration of Recording 14–

The recording begins, not in the fake abode of Lapadj and Sarela as it had previously ended, but in the Human office in which Lapadj works. He is sitting on a chair, looking not at the lit computer screen before him but the approaching form of Anna. There is a grapefruit, the Grapefruit, placed next to him on the table, also gazing out to Anna who is walking towards them.

“Hello,” ‘Harrison’ calls out to her. “What are we doing today?”

“Wow, so into working today,” Anna says as she sits down with her cup of coffee. Steam rises from it. “This is good. Positivity and all that. I’m excited.” Her eyes flicker to Grapefruit. “Ah, so you liked the grapefruit I gave you and got another one. They are very-“

“Healthy, I know,” Lapadj says. “I enjoy it.”

“That’s good,” she says with a nod.

“Can you be more awkward?” Sarela asks him.

“I cannot make a definite statement either way, but it seems like he would have to try to do so,” the Goddess remarks.

“Aye ky to that,” Sarela mutters. Lapadj shakes his head.

“So, what is the agenda for this day?” ‘Harrison’ inquires.

“Well, we are not doing Java anymore,” Anna leads with. “We are using Clojure and we are going to be parsing a Base64 binary string.”

“I heard words in that sentence,” Sarela states.

“I understood it!” the Goddess exclaims.

“You better understand it or else this Human might take over your position.”

Grapefruit goes to silence because of that searing remark. Sarela joins her smugly.

Lapadj, however, does no such thing. He says: “Okay. How shall we begin?”

Anna leans over and uses the keyboard and mouse to fire up IntelliJ.

“Is that not the editor for Java?” Lapadj inquires. “Why would we use it for Clojure?”

“Because Clojure has Java interop,” she answers plainly. “Although the languages aren’t very much alike, using IntelliJ can make some sense. I also have this thing called Cursive which makes it work even better. Most people use Vim or Emacs, but I like using IntelliJ and since we were just using it it’ll be more familiar to us.”

“Were you being serious?” the Goddess of Programming asks the invisible Szarehan.

“Maybe not,” she whispers in reply.

Lapadj glances at Grapefruit and narrows his eyes. Then he shakes his head. “Whatever–what is Vim and Emacs?”

“Other text editors. There is this little war between them. Some people live and die by them,” Anna explains and starts typing out the basic parts of the file.

“That seems nonsensical. Why does it matter how one types text?” Lapadj asks, voice growing slightly heated.

The Human female shrugs and takes a large gulp of coffee. “Vim is supposed to be better for your hands and makes you type faster. I like Vim for most languages. I feel more efficient with it.”

“Okay.” He nods slightly. “We will have to try this editor sometime.”

“Hmm. Want to try using it for a little now?” Anna asks. “We can use IntelliJ later if we think it’ll be useful, but we can start off in Vim.” She launches Vim and closes IntelliJ. The screen is plain and even more primitive in comparison.

“That is a good idea,” Lapadj says slowly, staring at the screen. He motions to begin typing but nothing happens. “It is broken.”

“Nope, you are not in insert mode.” She presses ‘i.’ “Now type.”

He does. He turns his head to her’s and stares. “Why?”

“That is just how it is. There are all these keybindings if you are not in insert mode.” She demonstrates a few–she highlights words and jumps between lines. “See? Pretty fast.”

Attempt to imitate her actions, Lapadj tries the Vim commands. He is struggling to accomplish basic tasks.

Anna looks over to her mug of brown-black liquid. “Be right back, I’m going to get some more coffee. Play around with Vim, alright?”

“Yes.” Lapadj makes a low growling noise as she absconds from the next.

“Efficiency, no?” Grapefruit quips and Lapadj makes a strangled hissing noise as he continues to fail to use Vim. It is assumed it is Sarela who turns off the recorder.

–Ending Basic Narration of Recording 14–

Based on a true story.

To be continued.