Developer cleverly shrank 2,600 lines of C into a six-line script but still ending up losing sleep

In the tech support world, a developer named Tim made headlines by rewriting 2,650 lines of C code into just six lines of a shell script. His task arose from a need to fix a data transfer program that utilized a custom implementation of File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

Tim encountered a challenge in locating the FTP source code, as he had to rely on a Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) to search through remote databases. Due to the limitations of the era, with no Linux available and AT&T porting Unix source code to universities without public release, Tim spent considerable time researching and decoding the FTP code.

Once he had identified the necessary code, Tim crafted his script, which ran overnight to gather data from the telco's switches, process the raw information, and transfer it to a mainframe. The script featured an automated paging system that would alert him if it encountered connection issues with the switch or mainframe after three attempts.

Despite the script's functionality, the telco's networks were unable to utilize it effectively. Consequently, Tim's pager began buzzing intermittently, night after night for two weeks. After expressing his grievances to his manager, Tim was eventually relieved of the pager duty. However, the new pager recipient proved unreliable, further exacerbating the sleepless nights. Tim eventually had to reclaim the pager and face the inevitable nightly interruptions.