• Resume
• USA

’Twas the Night Before Implementation....

and all through the house,
not a program was working, not even a browse.

The programmers hung by their tubes in despair,
with hopes that a miracle soon would be there.

When out from the machine room there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.

And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a super–programmer (with a six–pack of beer).

His resume glowed with experience so rare,
He turned out great code with a bit–pushers flair.

More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
and he cursed and muttered and called them by name:

“On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!”
“On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!”

His eyes were glazed over, fingers nimble and lean,
from weekends and nights in front of a screen.

A wink of his eye, and a twitch of his head,
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work
turning specs into code, then turned with a jerk.

And laying his finger upon the <enter> key,
he brought it all up and it worked perfectly:

The Updates updated; the deletes, they deleted;
the inquiries inquired, and the closings completed.

He tested each whistle, he tested each bell,
with nary abend, all had gone well.

The system was finished, the tests were concluded.
the users’ last changes were even included!

Yet the users exclaimed with a snarl and a taunt,
“It’s just what we asked for, but not what we want!”