The Rhyme of the Ancient Programmer

The Rhyme of the Ancient Programmer

(with heartfelt apologies to STC)

It is an ancient Programmer,
And he stoppeth one of three.
‘By thy long gray beard and bloodshot eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?’

The concert doors are opened wide,
The X has all been used.
‘The opening band’s about to start,
Why keep me from my booze?’

He holds them with a shaking hand,
‘There was a bug’ quoth he.
‘Let go! Get lost, you whack job nut!’
Eftsoons his hand dropt he. ^[1]

He holds him with his bloodshot eye
The Mike Ness fan stands still
And listens like a COD Noob:
The Programmer hath his will.

The concert goer only stares,
And sits down on the floor.
He cannot choose but to hear,
The Programmer blocks the door.

The kickoff held, requirements done,
Merrily did we start.
Code we wrote, both day and night,
And never stopped to fart.

Diet Coke and Mountain Dew
And pizza had we all
Glorious was the time we had
We worked from Spring to Fall.

ByVal, ByRef, and Index 1
What joy to code in VB!
It twas enough to give anyone
A bad case of heebie jeebies.

The grid control was our best friend
ADO was working well
And all was fine until we found
The OCX from Hell.

The concert goer tries to move
With foot he pins him down.
The band is tuning up—they’re on!
But he’s stuck there on the ground.

SatanGrid was its sorry name
We should have stayed away.
‘Avast! Heave to!’ my premier cried.
No notice did we pay.

A memory leak our app did spring,
We searched both high and low.
No leak we found, no bug to kill
Our app was now too slow.

Our project dates began to slip
Long nights we labored hard
Stuck at our desks the bug we sought
Our butts turned into lard.

Our app it slowed until it stopped
The network went down too!
VPs beat us like a two dollar mule
It truly made us blue.

The gravy train was cut right off
No pizza did appear.
Diet Coke and Mountain Dew
Were next, we all did fear.

Alas! Our dread was not in vain
‘No more for you!’ they cried.
‘Fix this bug! Make it work!
Or you’ll wish that you had died.’

Die we did, each several man,
My crew at their desks did fall.
Undead they were, to my dismay,
Became they Zombies all.

Like an undead army this ghastly team
Destroyed all in their path.
Ev’ry desktop BSOD’ed
Every BIOS crashed.

Out they fanned, out past the walls
The city then went dark.
Nothing survived this dreadful horde
No street, no block, no park.

’Tis the end!’ I thought, and then a buzz
My iPhone—it still worked!
The battery strong, the signal good
Some hope within me lurked.

I RD’ed in, I found the source,
That demonic grid control.
All day and night we struggled on
It sought my very soul.

Exorcised it finally was,
It writhed upon the floor.
Twisted, hideous, gray and vile
I kicked it out the door.

Quickly now, and all was done
C Sharp, .NET I used.
With managed code no more was I
By evil code bemused.

Slowly desktops came back up
The zombies dropped and fell.
The OCX with one last shriek
Returned to its home in hell.

The band is rocking, the music hot
The pit is moving fast.
The concert goer moveth not
Appears he’s breathed his last.

The concert goer, of sheer boredom
Now has truly died.
Plucking his ticket from his cold, dead hands,
The Progammer grins: ‘I lied.’

[1] This line was so great in the original I just had to reuse it. How often do you get to use eftsoons and dropt together?