Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 435 - 79 The Language of Machines

Chapter 435: Chapter 79 The Language of Machines

Three years ago, Xiang Shan led Yuki up the Pine Eagle Building just like now.

Back then, the others who followed were two young heroes from the Redstone Gate, Cui Hai and Huang Ouguang, and there was also a sister who wasn’t yet called Panic.

At that time, Yuki’s Inner Strength defense wasn’t too much stronger than it is now.

But back then, Yuki was afraid of nothing.

At that time, Yuki believed that his master was very strong.

Now, Yuki understands that although his master is strong, it has nothing to do with the current him.

With his master’s personality, if he says he won’t help, he really won’t help.

He says it’s a test, so it must be completed on one’s own.

Thus, Yuki felt afraid.

If he botches the test, both he and his master could be detained on the spot by the government.

Yuki turned off his Prosthetic Eye, refusing to look at anything. Resting his left hand on the stair railing, he ascended with the assistance of the gait support program.

After all, the stairs of this building were uniformly high, so he could simply walk up like this.

In this manner, Yuki immersed himself in darkness.

He intended to focus all his attention on the code within his brain. Unlike Xiang Shan, he couldn’t fully memorize the code.

He had to input it anew.

In theory, this was something he had already done thousands of times. Xiang Shan used to have him write these kinds of patches as part of his daily training.

This was something that should be completed in a short amount of time.

But now, he just couldn’t get it right.

Yuki felt as if the entire world was drifting away from him. He was trapped on a narrow flight of stairs—in the darkness, it seemed as if the world shrank to just this stretch of stairs. Moreover, the stairway had no safeguards, and he could fall at any moment.

Even as his hand clung to the wall, that feeling persisted.

In the darkness, an indescribable malice lurked. "It" could at any time press down, ready to crush him.

—Damn...

Yuki clenched his fists.

He couldn’t even use his Inner Strength to read the patch code.

Ahead of him, Xiang Shan calmly said, "This totally won’t do, my friend. Do you remember what I told you? Without calming your mind, you can’t understand code smoothly. It’s like a ’foreign language’..."

Yuki gritted his teeth: "Wow, I never knew in my life what a ’foreign language’ is..."

Xiang Shan just shrugged.

In this era, the old imagined communities were violently destroyed by Protectors, and humanity became a malformed amalgamation. Languages ceased to differentiate origin; all characters could be mixed together according to an arbitrary set of rules. For Yuki’s generation, those "unseen foreign language characters" had the same status as "obscure words from their mother tongue". They had no confusion about "one concept having many different pronunciations or spellings".

This language wasn’t bad or devoid of beauty. If humans could have communicated in this form in the Old Era, perhaps there would have been fewer conflicts in the world.

However, Xiang Shan always felt that the birth of such a language should never be based on "violent destruction of all old linguistic systems".

"Calm as a Mirror, Still as Water, respond when signals come, and let them go without clinging," Xiang Shan said. "When your mind is disturbed, you can’t understand the language of machines."

Code itself isn’t meant for human eyes.

To humans, code is essentially a "foreign language"—a foreign language spoken to machines.

Machines possess logic gates for neurons and integrated circuits for thinking organs. These thinking organs are incompatible with human’s natural speech.

Machines have their own language—it’s the clear-cut Commands of on and off, zeros and ones, and-or-not. This is what machines can understand.

If humans want to control powerful machines, they must speak the machines’ language.

In the ancient times, machines had no intellect and could be commanded with a simple "on and off".

But after gaining intelligence, one must learn the language of machines.

But the human brain isn’t suited for machine language. Not everyone can learn such things.

Only programmers who have studied the language of machines can communicate with computers.

The programmer’s job is to negotiate simple "routines" with the machine so that ordinary people who can’t communicate with machines can also interact with them.

Even for programmers, code is as foreign and cumbersome as a second language.

When learning a second language, humans encounter something known as "language fossilization".

Many foreign language learners, after reaching a certain level, might experience a plateau. Their brains automatically construct a "interlanguage" system. "Interlanguage" is not the learner’s native language nor the target language, but it possesses characteristics of both, existing as a continuum or threshold between the two, with certain flaws or not quite idiomatic.

Once this stage is reached, the learning of the foreign language starts to stagnate. Ninety-five percent of second language learners can’t get past this stage; the more they learn, the more rigid they become.

This process is known as "language fossilization."

A long time ago, Ingrid and Zhu Xinyu talked about this idea in their conversation — high-level languages might just be the result of humans learning the language of machines, a product of language fossilization.

This might also the reason why the abilities of programmers are so markedly different.

Those who wield a second language as fluently as their mother tongue and those who can barely read it naturally differ greatly in their linguistic abilities. Most people can easily recognize a foreigner learning their native language. Communicating in a halting second language naturally has a lower efficiency than the former.

It’s the same for machines. Machines can easily understand the instructions of powerful programmers. If a programmer’s own code is "halting" and has a "strange accent," then naturally, machines can’t execute it quickly.

"Being affected by fear merely proves that your training in Inner Strength is still lurking at the doorstep," Xiang Shan said. "If you can’t train to output code as naturally as speaking, you can’t master profound Inner Strength. This is just the beginning."

Of course, it’s an exaggeration.

The realm of command and the Linguistic Realm don’t need to go that far. To achieve that would be reaching the Great Perfection of the Linguistic Realm.

It is above the Linguistic Realm that such requirements exist.

Xiang Shan was merely catalyzing the anxiety in his disciple’s heart.

It also added a bit of difficulty to the test.

Soon, Yuki missed a step. There were no more steps ahead. He nearly fell down.

They had reached the hundredth floor.

Xiang Shan patted his shoulder and pulled him toward a window.

"Come on, let’s see what you’ve accomplished in these three years."