Software Architecture, Agility & .NET

The Gates Code

1

In the middle of the night, master coder Rupert Longdon got a phone call at his hotel in Sunnyvale, California. Longdon, who was an expert with modern symbols mostly found on computer keyboards and was in town to convert the local Java gurus to another development environment from way up North, was confused.
     "Mr Longdon?"
     "Speaking."
     "Mr Longdon, this is the Sunnyvale Police. My name is Captain Faché."
     "Yes?"
     "Have you talked to any Java people recently?"
     Strange. Maybe the Sunnyvale Police knows why nobody showed up at his presentation earlier?
     "Yes. But there was nobody there."
     "Mr Longdon, this is because tonight, under very strange circumstances, Java got killed. I'm sending a car over to pick you up. We need your help to solve this mystery."

2

Half an hour later, Rupert Longdon stood over the dead corpse of Java. It was surrounded by strange symbols carved in the floor, visible only to the trained eye. Who could have done this? Longdon wondered. As if he could read his guest's mind, Faché answered.
     "Java did this to itself."
     "Java committed suicide? Why?"  Longdon couldn't believe it.
     Faché pointed to the strange symbols surrounding Java's lifeless shell. Very bizarre indeed. On Java's left side were the following words and numbers:

8 5 0 13 3 1 2 1 21 ...
Bag, Sell It!
A Stud, Louis IV!

On Java's right side was simply written:

.NET

     "Does all of this mean anything to you?" Faché wondered.
     "Only that I've read about a similar case recently, during my vacation," Longdon responded. "But that is not relevant here."

3

Longdon studied the symbols carefully, made some calculations and was happy to give Captain Faché, who was getting anxious to crack the case quickly, an answer to the first riddle.
     "NET can be read backwards, saying 'TEN'. This probably means that Java was attacked by ten maniacs, backwards. This would also explain the dot at the beginning of .NET, which would signify the end, when read back to front."
     "Interesting hypothesis," Faché had to acknowledge. "What about the rest?"
     "The rest was written by someone who knows more about math than Dan Brown, the mystery author."
     "Oh? Why is that?" Faché wanted to know.
     "Because the number 0 is included. This, my dear Captain, is the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence, including the zero."
     "Mr Brown omitted the zero, is that what you're saying?"
     "Indeed," Longdon replied. "And he forgot to mention that the Fibonacci sequence is endless -- it doesn't end at 21."

Faché had to admit that his guest had a point. Which was unfortunate, because Faché had hoped to frame him for Java's demise. He decided to give it another try anyway.
     "What about the funny order of the numbers? Isn't the Fibonacci sequence in order?"
     "That is right. It goes 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, etc. Maybe Java was dyslexic, that would explain what we're seeing here."
     "Mr Longdon," Faché replied calmly, "I can assure you that with assumptions like the ones you make, you're not going to make many friends in some communities that may read my report. What else can you tell me?"
The computer symbologist gave it some thought.
     "Maybe the other lines are in the wrong order, too. Maybe 'Bag, Sell It' has to be changed somehow, mingled, mixed, repositioned, to point to the Java killer."
He didn't realize at the time how right he was. "Ti Less Gab" was not the answer, but Longdon was close.

4

"I think we have to look for the solution somewhere else," offered Sophie VB, the just-arrived cryptologist who invented the late-bound variant-type variable. "I mean, let's look at the rivals of Java. Who would be happy with Java's demise?"
     Faché decided to have a go.
     "Starbucks?"
     "Close, but no cigar. Bag, Sell It is an anagram..."
     "Of Bill Gates!" Longdon exclaimed. And indeed it was.
     "Java points to Bill Gates as the reason it was dying?" Faché wondered. "It makes sense. What about the bottom line?"
     "The bottom line is that .NET, certainly the new version, is becoming the development environment of choice for many programmers who used to code in Java," Sophie replied.
     "No, I mean, the bottom line of the riddle?"
     "The reason Java was dying when it wrote down the mysterious symbols?"
     The three of them looked at the desperate cry for help that was carved in the floor next to Java's corpse.

A Stud, Louis IV!

What could it mean?