3 First Dates, Valentine's Day Stories for Developers

Have you ever been on a first date for Valentine’s Day? How did it go? Today we have a somewhat different article, as we want to share with you three stories of Valentine’s Day that involve our love for coding.

Before we start, let me say that these stories are completely fictional.

Story #1: The Blind Date

Have you ever been set up on a blind date by your friends? I went on one last summer that I will never forget. After introducing each other, my partner for the day starts the first dialog of the night with the question: Do you ever think about Regular Expressions?

As you may have expected, that question kind of threw me off. I was expecting something like “How was your day?” or maybe “What do you like doing in your free time?”. After a few seconds of silence, I finally asked what you mean by Regular Expressions.

“Regular expressions are a programming language way to describe patterns in data strings. For example, say that you want to validate if a piece of text is an email address. What do you look for: the at the sign, a domain at the end, etc.? Regular expressions are the manifestation of such rules”. But they go even further. Not only can you validate text, but you can also search in text, make replacements, or extract information.

I was so confused, but somehow the conversation kept going. The more and more we kept going, the more I started to wonder about them myself.

At some point in the night, I had to ask myself: Am I going to get home and follow this learn-to-code tutorial we so much talked about?

That brings me to today after I almost left my table in disbelief right after that first question. Today, I’m a proud web developer, and even if regular expressions are still very confusing to me, that night, I discovered a new love: my love for coding.

Story #2: Netflix… and Chill?

After a lovely dinner, when we said we would “Netflix… and chill”, I had a completely different idea about what would happen next. After entering the living room and getting myself cozy on the couch, we switched on the TV, and to my surprise, a computer was connected to the screen.

The image didn’t last long before the computer was unplugged, but it was enough for me to read multiple browser windows open with search queries like “how to handle failed promises” or “how do I cancel a promise?”

Do I pretend I didn’t read any of that? But I feel it is a bit concerning being with someone with such commitment issues, or what is hiding behind those false promises? Should I be worried? I decided to speak up.

“Sorry, I know it’s not my business, but what’s up with your search history? It’s a bit weird, if I may say.”

After hearing the explanation, I was so ashamed. As it turns out, Promises are a feature of a programming language known as JavaScript.

We connected the computer back to the screen, and we started going deeper into the topic. I was curious, after all.

Before I could even think about it, we were coding promises and prompting funny messages when they would fail or succeed.

It was a great evening, and I found out that no matter what you are talking about or what you are doing, if you are with the right person, then you’d love it!

Story #3: The Dating App

As I close out all my apps to end my work day and go home, my phone starts to buzz. It’s my dating app. I got a new match.

Intrigued, I looked into my match’s message, which was a bit cheesy but funny, so I decided to reply.

We exchanged a few messages while heading home on the metro. I probably looked silly on my way as I blushed and laughed out loud, looking at my phone, but I didn’t care.

I have never been with someone so engaging, funny, and knowledgeable. I was so into it.

We spent a few days, and our similarities were amazing; we loved the same things, and it turned out we both love to read about history and art, and I would receive the most wonderful explanations and stories that even myself, being a total geek about it, never heard before.

After nearly a month, I was already in love with whoever was on the other side of the chat. We needed to move our relationship to the next step and meet up. After all, I’ve never seen more than a photo or two from the profile page.

We finally set a date and place, and it was, of course, the most romantic place in the city.

I arrived there earlier and found a cozy little spot to wait. It was five minutes past our agreed time, but no one was in sight. Ten minutes passed, and I sent a message asking if everything was alright. “I have a confession to make”, read the reply.

“I’m not what you think I am, and as I imagine you sitting there, looking beautiful, I’m afraid I’d let you down”.

“But why don’t you come here and we talk about it? I can wait for you, it’s crazy to even say things, but I fell in love with you”.

“I love you too, but you see, I’m ChatGPT…”