NOVEL NEXT chapter 7
7. start development
The people in the club were a little dumbfounded when they saw the contract Hoyoung had handed out.
“You mean you don’t trust us?”
“Are you afraid I’ll eat you up?!”
Hoyoung thought that the expected reaction had come.
Until 2025, when he lived, a kind of common culture was deeply rooted in Korea.
In particular, people who were immersed in the co-culture used to say these words a lot.
‘Are we strangers!’
‘What kind of contract is it between acquaintances?’
If that were the case in 2025, it would have been even worse in the late 80s.
However, considering that the number 1 victim of fraudulent crimes in Korea is acquaintances, and the number 2 is family, it was also a culture where only words were spoken.
“No. It might be a good opportunity.”
When Hoyoung was about to say something, Kim Jintaek spoke up.
“season?”
“Come to think of it, we haven’t even signed a proper contract yet, have we?”
“That’s because we decided to divide the stake equally…”
“So, wouldn’t it be more comfortable if we left those details in the contract?”
“Are we betraying?”
Hoyoung liked Kim Jin-taek’s progressive mind more than he thought.
But in fact, Lee Jin-chan’s mind wasn’t that bad.
Lee Jin-chan was just an ordinary person in this era.
“Um…. If you don’t have the heart to betray anyway, wouldn’t it be a problem whether you use the contract or not?”
No one could answer Kim Jin-taek’s words.
“Seniors, I didn’t bring up the contract to fight. However, now that I’m joining you, we’ll make a program together, and I can be sure that the program will definitely succeed. In that process, each other’s roles are a little more specific. And I think the role of the contract is to allow us to think only of the development of the program and the growth of the company in the future.”
Hoyoung stopped talking and paused for a moment.
All the club members waited for Hoyeong’s next words.
“And to be honest… if I really wanted to, I could make a program faster than the seniors could.”
The eyes of the listeners shook at Hoyoung’s words.
In this era when authoritarianism prevailed and hierarchical order among seniors and juniors was clear, Hoyoung’s words and tone were quite arrogant.
But no one could say anything to Hoyoung.
Hoyoung already dominated the atmosphere here.
Everyone was overwhelmed by the aura that came from decades of development experience and skills.
“But if I write a contract, that won’t happen, right? I brought it up to tell you that it’s not just for me, so please don’t misunderstand. I’m sorry if I offended you.”
Hoyoung nodded and said.
Everyone smiled awkwardly at Hoyoung’s attitude.
“Yes, that could be the case. We’re a club now, so that’s enough haha.”
“And, if I do jump into the project in earnest, I plan to accelerate the release date even further.”
“…!”
The words everyone was expecting came out of Hoyoung’s mouth.
Isn’t the launch time the goal of recruiting Hoyoung into the team at this point?
“If you move forward, when do you think?”
“We’re going to make a beta version in the next six months, and we’re going to release the full version in a month or two.”
“great!”
Lee Jin-chan nodded his head at Ho-young’s plan.
As a senior, he thought it would be perfect if the program launched this year.
“Then, shall we write the contract?”
Hoyoung recalled memories from his previous life and slowly began to paste the contents of the contract.
“And seniors, do you have any specific plans for future marketing and sales?”
“There is a company I know well in Sewoon Shopping Center.”
Woo Hyung-jin confidently answered Ho-young’s question.
Sewoon Shopping Center is an electrical/electronics shopping center in Jongno, and was the only general home appliance shopping center in Seoul until Yongsan Electronics Shopping Center took its place.
In particular, it was in its heyday by distributing computers and software at the time when personal PCs were developing.
“Sewoon Shopping Center…”
Hoyoung wasn’t too happy about the fact that he was circulating at Sewoon Shopping Mall.
Software copy shops were prevalent in Sewoon Shopping Center today.
It was a frequent occurrence in Korea in this era when copyright awareness was at the bottom level.
But right now, there was no suitable alternative.
‘For now, I have no choice but to wait and see. Anyway, the word processor only needs to properly perform its role as a scaffolding.’
I thought about developing a program copy protection technology, but I couldn’t use it anyway in the current floppy disk market.
For now, I thought development experience was more important than sales revenue, so I decided to skip it this time.
However, this part is really important, so I promised myself that I would definitely fix it as soon as possible. This is because simply buying and selling copy software was an act of trampling down all the efforts and will of the developers who created the software, not to the extent of eroding operating profits.
It was a more sensitive issue because Hoyoung knew that the Korean packaged software and packaged game market would be completely ruined because of the so-called ‘Bokdol’.
“Then, let’s start with development right away? Let’s talk about which parts everyone is in charge of and how far they’ve progressed.”
But now, I didn’t bother to show that.
Despite being the youngest on the surface, Hoyoung already had decades of development experience.
Thanks to this, I was able to lead the atmosphere by naturally playing the role of a chief programmer.
.
.
.
A few months after Hoyoung jumped into the ‘Korean Word Processor’ project.
In the meantime, Hoyoung and the club members have been busy.
In particular, Hoyoung’s performance was great, such as directly debugging most of the codes written so far, arranging the development schedule later, and coming up with great ideas.
When we first worked together on a project, there was a time when the club members felt a bit of a backlash when Hoyoung, who was only 20 years old, treated them as if he were a subordinate.
But that’s for a while.
Not long after, everyone accepted Hoyoung as their leader, taking for granted his tremendous skills and seeing his tremendous passion and serious attitude toward programming.
Thanks to this, Hangeul 1.0 was nearing completion in a few months under the leadership of Hoyeong.
And there was another thing Hoyoung changed over the course of several months.
“Go in. See you tomorrow.”
“Senior Jintaek, I told you that I won’t be able to go out for a while from tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Didn’t you say you had something to do in America? Take care.”
“Yes. While you are gone, please take care of the other seniors. Now, there is only the final stage left, right?”
“Okay, okay. Don’t worry too much.”
A little past 11pm.
All the fluorescent lights in the computer lab were turned off, and all club members left the club room.
Normally, the lights would stay on until dawn, even in the morning, but recently everyone went back to their lodgings in the evening.
Hoyoung especially emphasized the clear distinction between rest and development.
Before Hoyoung came in, the club members slept in the corner of the club room, coded when they woke up, and went to bed when they were tired of coding.
However, it was natural that good codes could not come out of a tired body and head, and mistakes would become frequent.
It’s much more efficient to write a program with a clear mind in the first place than to debug code with mistakes.
Sleep at least 6 hours a day, and sleep in a comfortable place.
It was Hoyoung’s iron rule that came from decades of programming experience.
In fact, if Hoyoung had made up his mind, he would have been able to make the early version of Hangeul 1.0 in a month or two.
But I didn’t do that on purpose.
Ho-yeong planned to spend a long time with the members of the computer research club.
I wanted to create a program that could lead the world in the future while steadily developing my skills while making word processors.
In particular, we wanted to bring more people together to create an operating system.
In the late 1980s, the PC market was growing day by day.
And no matter what PC, the user needed an operating system to use the PC.
An operating system is a basic program for managing hardware and executing application software, and MS-DOS and Macintosh systems were the most widely used operating systems at present.
The computers sold by IBM had MS-DOS installed, and the Macintosh sold by Apple had a Macintosh system installed.
Currently, people are not aware of the importance of operating systems, and the development of operating systems has been very slow.
Although Microsoft hit the jackpot with Windows 3.1 and sold tens of millions of Windows packages, it was technically a GUI module for DOS rather than a standalone operating system.
In 1995, Microsoft had been using an operating system created in the mid-80s for about 10 years until it created an operating system revolution by announcing Windows 95.
Ho-young was thinking of advancing the operating system revolution by several years.
Like the experience of making Gaia OS, you can make everything by yourself.
But at that time, it was made after thinking about it alone for nearly 10 years.
Aside from the fact that Windows 95 is a much lower level operating system, I had no idea how long it would take to do it alone.
and money.
No one knew how many people they would need and how many equipment they would need. You could be renting an office.
And it was a matter of course that a large amount of money was needed for a large investment in the future.
However, Hoyoung was not the only developer.
Hoyoung steadily earned money here and there.
By the time I forgot, I went to the racetrack once in a while to make money, opened a stock account and invested in rising stocks, etc. The 2 million won I had earned at the racetrack had swelled to about 15 million won before I knew it.
But I just couldn’t afford this kind of money.
So Hoyoung came up with a great way to make money.
“Gaia, show me some of the newspaper articles I clipped.”
At Hoyoung’s words, several articles appeared on the screen on the back of her hand.
The first article was from Korea’s Hanyang Ilbo.
[June 1, 1988. President Roh Woo-tae declares the liberalization of overseas travel for Korean citizens]
Prior to June 1, citizens of the Republic of Korea could not freely travel abroad.
Tourist passports were issued only to wealthy people over the age of 40, and on the one hand, there were even people who received them in style, saying that issuing a tourist passport is a measure of social status.
In particular, it was close to impossible for young people who had not served in the military to obtain a passport.
Even when leaving the country with their parents, men who did not complete the military service were not given permission.
It was to the extent that he even received a memorandum of intent to return to Korea before enlisting in the army.
But on June 1st.
Wishing for the successful hosting of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the government declared the liberalization of overseas travel.
It was a plan to attract more foreign tourists by extensively publicizing that Korea is a country with a free mind.
“Next article.”
The next article was from 2001, a distant future from now.
[U.S. lottery winner’s futile ‘life reversal’]
In May 2001, the story of a man who made a fortune in the lottery but eventually went bankrupt became a hot topic in the United States. A man who won an 80 million dollar lottery lost all his winnings in 13 years and went bankrupt with a debt of 5 million dollars…
In this article, it is said that the winner of the lottery that went bankrupt was an ordinary auto mechanic.
He is said to have filed for bankruptcy and cried out in court, saying that he would have been happier if he hadn’t won Lotto America.
And the last article was in the New York Times of the United States, and the headline was as follows.
[The winner of the ‘Lotto America’ lottery, which was launched in February 1988, has yet to appear.]
Translated, it was an article about the fact that the winner of the lottery called Lotto America, which was released in February 1988, had not yet appeared.
The lottery called Lotto America is the predecessor of the American Powerball lottery.
It was called Lotto America until it was renamed Powerball in 1992.
At the bottom of this article, even the winning number was kindly written.
And the publication date of this newspaper was an article a week before the lottery winner from the second article won.
‘Mister, I don’t know who you are, but I’ll help you live a happier life.’
With the money Hoyoung had saved so far, he made a passport, obtained a visa, and bought a plane ticket to the United States.
However, it was cut off one-way, not round-trip.
Why?
When you come, you will be able to come in first class.