The working landing page, which is actually waiting for edits, is what Tommy quietly pushes aside today. He is drawn back to his 2048 — the very one he made yesterday. He wants it to get a real “wow” in the office. He launches it, makes a couple of moves — and winces. Bare numbers on the tiles suddenly seem boring. What if, instead of numbers, he put something else there?
For example, he could build cars out of parts. But for that he would need to draw pictures, and he wants results faster. And faster means using Emoji. So, what emoji do we have? He can try to make something like evolution: an amoeba turns into a fish, then into a frog, and so on.
In Tommy’s head, a beautiful picture appears, and he types to Sam:
Replace the numbers in 2048 with evolution: amoeba → fish → lizard → human.Sam jokes again:
“If I got a dollar for every task without a spec, I would have been a millionaire long ago.”
Tommy sighs and goes to Alex:
“Alex, please write me a new spec for 2048. I want animal evolution there instead of numbers. Use emoji as the pictures.”
“I’ll do it now,” Alex writes and gets to work.
Interesting, Tommy thinks. How is it that I give Alex a more detailed spec than I do Sam? It would make more sense the other way around… But he does not manage to think it through — Alex has already written the finished spec.
“Sam, please fix 2048 according to the new spec.” Tommy did not even notice how he started treating both AIs like his friends. “Being able to say Thank you and Please, first of all, says something about good manners,” he remembers someone advising. He does not remember who, but he completely agrees with it. Any problem can be solved with words.
Sam finishes the work, and the page opens in the browser by itself. Tommy merges two tiles — amoeba turns into a fish, fish into a lizard — and snorts with delight. Pretty addictive.
“Oh, and let’s do more.” And off it goes. “Make a version with plants: sprout, bush, tree.” “Done.” “Now cars: a sports car is assembled from a boxy old Zhiguli.” “Done.”
He runs each one by hand, laughs, compares. And he catches himself on a strange thought: before, the fun was in playing. And now he is not really playing the game itself — he is creating them, one after another, and the fun has shifted there. Which one is more amusing, which one is clearer at first glance, which one is just funnier. A month ago he would not have been able to handle even one like that, and now they are flying out from under his hands in batches. Evolution works better than anything — he gets hooked on it.
1. How work gets lost without version history
There is a saying that “quantity always turns into quality.” But not today. Game variants pile up, and every one is painful to lose — what if this version was the perfect one, and the next edit will ruin it? Tommy solves the problem in the most obvious way that comes to mind: he copies the entire project folder. A good theme came out — copied it, set it aside, went to make the next one.
At first, it even seems reasonable. One theme — one folder. The second — another one. Then comes 2048-final. Then, after he piles more on top of final, 2048-final2 appears. And when that was not the last one either, a masterpiece is born — 2048-final-tochno-posledniy. AI works fast, so the folders multiply like mushrooms after rain.
After an hour, Tommy realizes that this cannot go on like this anymore. On the screen there are a dozen almost identical directories with names more absurd than the last, and he no longer remembers what lives where. He opens final2, thinking it has the newest version — but it has old stuff. He runs tochno-posledniy — but that one, on the contrary, is an unfinished draft he abandoned halfway through. He starts launching them one after another to figure out by eye which version is the liveliest — and quickly gets even more confused.
At some point he catches himself spending ten minutes not on the game, but on the archaeology of his own folders. And that is already upsetting to the point of anger: he copied them for safety, so nothing would get lost. But in fact — he lost his orientation. He started getting confused more than if he had not saved anything at all. Before, there was one folder, and inside it — maybe one, but understandable version. Now there are ten, and not a single understandable one.
Oliver walks by. His eye catches the screen, that palisade of final, final2, tochno-posledniy — and Oliver snorts. But he is not laughing maliciously, not “well, look at you, rookie.” He laughs that special kind of laugh in which recognition is stronger than a jab.
“Oh, I know that,” he says. “My thesis was like that. Diplom_final, Diplom_final_ispr, Diplom_final_ispr2, Diplom_vot_etot. You know how it ended? I printed the wrong version. I brought a draft with typos to the defense, and the clean copy stayed in final_ispravlennyy, which I never reached.”
Tommy laughs with him — loudly, with obvious relief — and at the same time he is already turning what he heard to his own advantage: yeah, old Oliver is a grown-up, he really works, a master and all that. And he stepped on exactly the same rake Tommy is stepping on right now. That means he is not some clumsy-handed newbie. The method is just dumb — and the method is not something he invented. So that is on the method.
“Listen, so does this happen to everyone?” he asks Oliver’s back. “Not just me?”
“Everyone who saves by folders,” the other one throws over his shoulder. “The method is broken. Everyone stumbles over it.”
And because of that “everyone,” Tommy even feels a little better — the screw-up stopped being personal. But better does not mean it let go. He no longer wants to live in a folder zoo; he knows that for sure now. As for how else — not yet.
And right there, on that “how else,” he feels the urge to write. Not to Alex — he will get to Alex later — but into a chat with Tom2036; talking about his own screw-ups with his future self somehow does not feel shameful. In a burst of feeling, the way people write to their own when they have made a mess and are angry: hey, I have spawned a dozen final folders here, I drowned in them myself, now I cannot get out. Can you suggest a normal way to save stuff?
😏 oh, a stack of copies. I know that, my dear ████ and what were you actually trying to do with these folders? Say it in words, not “folders,” but why.
Tommy snorts: as always, instead of an answer, a question. But since he was asked, he starts answering, more to himself than to the chat. Why folders. Well, why — so he would not lose a good version. So there would be a point you can return to if the next edit ruins everything. So he could roll back to the moment when things were good…
And on that word — “roll back to the moment when things were good” — something clicks in his head by itself. That is exactly what he does in games. Saved before the boss, died — loaded, as if he had never died. Save. He did not want to spawn folders. He wanted a save for code — but with folders he was just building it by hand, crookedly, the hard way.
He rereads what he figured out on his own, and it is even funny to him: the older guy did not say a single useful word, just asked again “why” — and Tommy spent half a minute diagnosing himself and figuring out what to ask for. Not “how to arrange the folders more neatly.” But a Save/Load button, like in a game, only for code.
With that, he goes to Alex. Not with whining about folders, but with a ready-made, sharpened question.
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