Shouldn't this line:
> "using regular expressions clocks in as taking about twice as long as the hashmap-based solution."
be written as the opposite? That the RE takes half as long/is twice as fast?
Great read. I could feel the emotion of the character's throughout. The story reminds me of a previous post I saw on HN about a tech support guy trying to solve mysterious bad code appearing in a professors program, only for him to fall down the rabbit whole and discovering a student had tampered with the compiler's code in a similar fashion. If someone could find and link the story, I would be very grateful.