{"id":11246,"date":"2025-07-19T21:39:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T01:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=11246"},"modified":"2025-07-22T06:02:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T10:02:55","slug":"the-perfect-programmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=11246","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Programmer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\r\n
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n 1 <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n

August 10, 2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found this little bit of poetry in a pile of very old documents I was sorting through today. It was printed by a dot matrix printer on greenbar, fanfold paper. It has the command ?DATA LIST at the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

“No program is that perfect, they said with a shrug,
the client is happy, what is one little bug?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he was determined, the others went home,
he dug out the flowchart, deserted and alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The night passed to morning, the room was cluttered
with memory dumps and punch cards, “I’m close,” he muttered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He chained morning’s cold coffee, logic, deduction,
“I’ve got it,” he cried, “Just change one instruction.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He changed two, then three more, and as year followed year,
all strangers would ask, “Is that guy still here?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He died at the console, of hunger and thirst,
next day he was buried, face down, 9 edge first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And his wife, through her tears, accepted his fate.
“He’s not really gone, he’s just working late.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 August 10, 2014 I found this little bit of poetry in a pile of very old documents I was sorting through today. It was printed by a dot matrix printer on greenbar, fanfold paper. It has the command ?DATA LIST at the beginning. “No program is that perfect, they said with a shrug,the client […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[796],"class_list":["post-11246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","tag-humor"],"modified_by":"David Both","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11246"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11285,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11246\/revisions\/11285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}