REGINA – As the US-Iran conflict deepens, smug software developer Sandra Cline is confident she can solve the matter by leveraging her well-honed regex skills.
“Many problems can seem complex, even insurmountable”, began Ms. Cline, “that’s where I step in”. She continued, “Often in our field, my peers can find themselves labouring for hours over string-matching to the point of exhaustion. Conditionals here, filters there, it’s infuriating. Not me, though, all I need is a few special characters and I can turn a hundred lines of code in to one”.
It is these talents that make Sandra certain that, as worries mount that the Trump administration’s war with the Islamic Republic has begun to spiral, she could be called on to step in.
“It’s just these sorts of situations that regex was meant for” she explained. “You need to coordinate a grouping of allies? That’s what square brackets are for! Need to intercept a ballastic missile? That’s what capturing is for! Concerned that oil prices might rise? Let me introduce you to the negation caret!”
Cline’s colleagues completely agree with her assessment that she could be well-used in the current bout of international strife. Said Mindy Harrelsson “Just this morning I found myself trapped on a data extraction ticket, concerned that I’d have to work overtime to crack it. Without even asking, Sandra swooped in, grabbed my keyboard and, with a few quick keystrokes, the problem was solved. As she handed it back to me, I gazed at her self-important smile, and thought to myself ‘How great would it be if she were in the Natanz right now?'”.
Even better, according to Cline, her special talents are universal and future-proof, and she sees no reason to fear redundancy, noting “I’m pretty confident I could even end the bloodshed in Jalisco with a few well-placed backslashes! I’d like to see AI do that!”.
At press time, AI has done that.
