Chapter 8: A freshman who hasn't even enrolled is going to be a university teacher?

Me? I'm Qin Miao!

At this moment, Teacher Li's mind was full of question marks: Who is Qin Miao?

Teacher Li, your program can already run; next, I'll write a demo program for you to look at.

Great!

Teacher Li had just risen from his seat when Qin Miao swooped down into the chair, then opened the program flowchart he'd brought and began clacking away at the keyboard.

Most programmers nowadays just copy and paste; they look for the code they need, paste it, do some debugging, get it to run, OK! As for whether the program is bloated or could be optimized, they wait until the customer notices it's slow, then optimize—and that's another fee.

In this era, writing programs means you have to type the code!

The clacking sound rang out, instantly drawing the attention of the four other teachers worrying over their computers—this fast?

Even rolling the keyboard with your face wouldn't be that fast!

But… his fingers dancing on the keyboard had an artistic air, so it didn't look like random hammering.

"Qin Miao, when did you learn to use the keyboard?" Yang Can, standing behind Qin Miao, stared in astonishment.

"Well, back home when I was bored, I drew a keyboard and practiced with wet fingers…" Qin Miao could do two things at once—typing while chatting with Yang Can—and this was programming, not just typing!

One hundred lines, two hundred lines… Soon, when the program reached over eight hundred lines, Qin Miao finally stopped his fingers—done!

Ctrl+S to save! Ctrl+F5 to run!

The screen returned to black, then began wildly flashing characters; everyone stared.

"No errors, runs on the first try—awesome!"

Our teachers usually make mistakes after just a few dozen lines, at most a hundred; you wrote over eight hundred lines and it ran perfectly on the first try?

"Wait, the program never stops—could it be an infinite loop?"

"Of course not, everyone, don't worry—the result will come out soon." Qin Miao said, turning to the person seated nearby: "Teacher, what's the problem with your program?"

"My program calculates pi, but each run only gives correct digits up to a few hundred places before it starts to go wrong…"

Teacher, how long have you hogged this computer? You keep trying because you can't get it to work, right?

Qin Miao thought to himself, then said: "Well, your program uses the Newton-Leibniz formula, which is fine, but when using a high-level language you run into data-type issues; your int type lacks precision, so you need to switch to float, letting the computer move from integer to floating-point operations—let me fix it for you."

One minute later, the teacher compared the screen to over two hundred digits—they matched perfectly!

Great, you're amazing—you're basically a computer genius! Come teach in our computer science department!

Zhou Ding's eyelid twitched for no reason.

Actually, this computer can do a lot of work; come, I'll write you a graphics program to open your eyes!

Half an hour later, after inputting nearly two thousand lines of code, and once it ran, the screen began to show a cylinder, its top gradually bulging outward…

All right, this one's done, third one… Qin Miao turned to the teacher next to him, who was already dumbfounded, and said: "Teacher, let me help you!"

Three hours later, all five computers were working, their screens showing different things—some characters, some graphics—but… none displayed a result.

Teacher Li pointed at the computer screen: "Qin Miao, are you sure this isn't an infinite loop?"

Of course not; it just might take a while to run.

How long?

At most… three days.

What?

Everyone was stunned; Professor Hu's face turned livid, with countless mythical beasts flying across his forehead—we'd agreed to share one machine at most, but now all five were taken, and once the programs run they can't be stopped, after all Zhou Ding's project has top priority!

Three whole days!

Three days later, the students will start trickling in to register! Our teachers still haven't mastered all the programming techniques for the Z80 computer!

Thinking this over, Professor Hu gave Qin Miao a resentful look, then smacked his forehead—he'd been looking far and wide when a suitable candidate was right before him!

"Um, Qin Miao," Professor Hu said, "you're familiar with this microcomputer and especially understand programming, so… when the new semester starts, could you fill in for our computer science department? Just teach BASIC and FORTRAN—nothing more."

Beside them, the four senior schoolmates who had come with Zhou Ding were dumbfounded—Qin Miao hasn't even completed enrollment procedures; strictly speaking, he isn't even an official Ha Gong Da student, and now he's supposed to be a Ha Gong Da teacher?

Zhou Ding also swallowed hard; if someone tried to recruit Qin Miao to another department, he'd surely roll up his sleeves and fight them, but now… it's about becoming a teacher!

For Qin Miao, this is a rare opportunity! Teaching in the computer science department now would make it easy to stay on as a Ha Gong Da teacher after graduation, and his own project would be wrapped up once the computations finish and prove sound—then he just needs to submit the data to the relevant departments for experiments…

Although Zhou Ding thought highly of Qin Miao, he couldn't drag Qin Miao down and hinder the boy's future development.

"Professor Hu, I can't—I don't have the qualifications," Qin Miao shook his head.

"How not? You just showed us that, and everyone's impressed."

"I mean… without the school's authorization, I'm just an ordinary student; teaching other students, even upperclassmen, I lack the proper standing—people won't accept it."

Everyone stood there, puzzled; after a while they realized this kid wasn't being modest—he wanted an official teacher's position? All right, you're awesome!

Actually, Qin Miao doesn't absolutely need that title; the point is, having it makes a difference! If a Ha Gong Da student is impersonated versus a Ha Gong Da teacher being impersonated, the response wouldn't be the same—even a substitute teacher is still a Ha Gong Da teacher!

"All right, I'll go apply to the school!" Professor Hu nodded.

"Thanks, Professor Hu—I don't ask for much; just give me a teacher's status, I'll forget about salary and benefits."

"Wait, what does this kid mean? Salary will definitely be paid—is he also planning to demand welfare, bonuses, a house?"