Wizard

TTTO “Merlin”, by Douglas MacArthur

Another bug in the code tonight

Just over here, it is not quite right

Dawn’s not too far away

I heard the newbies chat on IRC

Will they have something good to see

When they wake up the next day

Well it’s late at night and the stars are deep

That’s ok I don’t need sleep

Coffee’s helpful for quite some time

But I have to fix that situation

And I need to clone that application

‘Cause I know that it can’t run on WINE

I think that some ideas I found

When I searched and looked around

And I need to rest my brain

The compile is slow and I have to wait

And I hope that it won’t make it late

The compiler is so lame

The file format is not quite understood

The standard says “must” and not “should”

I feel like I’ve hit a wall

And I don’t know when and I don’t know how

And I think I will fix this somehow

This problem is so small

Well I remember the day I started here

Tinged with excitement and some fear

As I’m coding up this clone

They said “such good programs can’t be free”

They mocked my crashes, and they laughed at me

As I’m coding this now alone

The pundits kissed my chance goodbye

And said “there is no chance, it will die,

It won’t change a thing ‘round here”

And over their shoulders, high on their horse

The users read and they said “of course,

Let’s away this failure we will steer”

The hackers cheered when they saw my smile

The hits went up and slashdot went wild

As this day I won the race

For hours coding made their mark

Hunched and typing in the dark

I can hardly wait to see the user’s face