The Code of Love

Monday, January 18th, 2010 | Posted by: Philip Persinger

A very smart computer programmer tries to write the formula for love, in my first book, Do the Math: a novel of the inevitable. He’s working on an ancient piece of IBM iron in the basement of a freezing college campus building. Yet despite the many yards of green bar paper that the machine spews out, he never quite succeeds in codifying the romance novel, which is so clearly formulaic.

While I was working on the book, I got curious and wrote a bit of the program for fun. Here it is:

case of

      :($currentPageNumber=46)
              if ($thinker=”male”)
                    vtThought:=”Rude girl!”
              else ($thinker=”female”)
                    vtThought:=”Such arrogance!”
              end if

      :($currentPageNumber=92)
              if ($thinker=”male”)
                    vtThought:=”But is there a fire burning inside the glacier?”
              else ($thinker=”female”)
                    vtThought:=”A generous act — from HIM?”
              end if

     :($currentPageNumber=138)
              if ($thinker=”male”)
                    vtThought:=”She makes me so mad!!!”
              else ($thinker=”female”)
                    vtThought:=”He makes me so mad!!!”
              end if

    :($currentPageNumber=182)
              if ($thinker=”male”)
                    vtThought:=”So soft.”
              else ($thinker=”female”)
                    vtThought:=”So firm.”
              end if

end case