Love & variables

This is part of a love & programming series.

Looking back on previous relationships, I was struck to realise they hold so little in common. One was with a leftist who kept borrowing money from me (most of which wasn’t actually borrowed), another with a university teacher who had drinking issues, and one with someone so emotionally repressed that it turned me into that person that keeps saying “we need to talk about this” (which, if you know me, seems inaccurate).

I tried to find what was the common ground of all these relationships, and then stopped. Does it actually matter? All I know is that for now, those relationships keep a certain place in my brain. Past relationships, ongoing ones, facts, opinions, they’re all variables coexisting in the application that is me.

Those variables don’t need to have the same type. Some are more concise than others.

Sometimes these memories can overlap with facts that I reuse over different areas of my application. Such as filmsByDirectors here, which I invoke to talk about teacherGuy.

Also notice that declaring them as constants doesn’t prevent me from adding new details when they come to mind.

In a nutshell, let’s just say that in love like in variables, content flows. It’s not so much about the values that are held — they’re subject to change — but that things are being given names. Spaces are being declared and assigned. Yes, let me make the assumption that love is a form of colonisation.

Basically, the only proof that love or a variable has existed is the fact that it’s been declared, and therefore the fact that it exists in memory. Just like saying I love you to someone is an instantiation of love.