Twas the night before shipping
And all through the house
Not a program was working,
Not even the mouse
The engineers hung by their monitors bright,
With hopes of a miracle soon within sight
The customers nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of progress danced in their heads
When out of the testbed 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 Body! On Inquire! On Delete!
On Batch Jobs! On Closing! and on with 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 made it 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 then worked perfectly
The updates updated; the deletes, they deleted;
The inquiries inquired and closing completed
He tested each whistle, and tested each bell,
With nary an Append, thus all had gone well
The job was now finished, the tests 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!"
