Twas the night before implementation
And all through the house
Not a program was working,
Not even a browse.
The engineers hung by their tubes in despair,
With hopes that a miracle soon would be there.
The customers were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of progress danced in their heads.
When out of the COPE [unk acronym] 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 pusher’s flair.
More rapid than eagles, his routines they came,
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name:
On Update! On Add! On Inquire! On Delete!
On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
His eyes were glazed over, fingers nimble and lean,
From weekends and nights spent in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye and a twist 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,
The system came up and worked perfectly.
The updates updated; the deletes, they deleted;
The inquiries inquired and closings completed.
He tested each whistle, and tested each bell,
With nary and APPEND, thus all had gone well.
The job was finished, the test were concluded,
The engineer’s last changes were even included.
“Heh!”, the customer exclaimed with a snarl and a taunt,
“It’s just what I asked for, but not what I want!”