textfiles/humor/COMPUTER/hakawath.jok

From sinclair@cs.glasgow.ac.uk Sat Apr  1 08:38:48 1989
From: sinclair@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Duncan Sinclair)
Subject: The Song Of Hakawatha


Although long, this is worth saving and printing out.

This is a text translation of a Macintosh WriteNow file.
Some of my peers may remember this from the wall in our 2nd year lab
two years ago.

Enjoy!



                      The Song Of Hakawatha

                            F. X. Reid

                        Poet and Tragedian



                           Introduction

  Longfellow's poem 'Hiawatha' (which the following verses somewhat
resemble) is a celebration of the incorrigibly primitive, framed in an
appropriately interminable and monotonously scanned sequence of lines.
So monotonous is the metre, indeed, that it renders the poem the most
easy to parody in this or any other language. So easy, in fact, that my
distinguished predecessor, the amateur logician and nude photographer,
the Rev. 'Chuck' L. Dodgeson prefaced his pastiche of it with an
apology for the lack of difficulty it had involved. cld (as UNIX* would
probably call him) used the form to present a stark account of the
ritualistic element of Victorian portrait photography.  It is my
intention to combine the two - the primitive and the ritualistic - to
describe the modern Shaman* namely the system hacker.











* Some may feel that this word contains superfluous letters.




        Part I

        The Logging-in of Hakawatha


        First, he sat and faced at the console
        Faced the glowing, humming console
        Typed his login at the keyboard
        Typed his password (fourteen letters)
        Waited till the system answered
        Waited long and cursed its slowness
        (Oh that irritating slowness -
        Like a mollusc with lumbago)
        Waited for what seemed like hours
        Till the operating system
        Printed out the latest whinings
        From the man called superuser -
        Moaning that some third year students
        Played adventure games at lunchtimes,
        Moaning that the Disc was nearly
        (Very nearly) full to bursting,
        Growling that he wouldn't take it
        Screaming that he'd get his own back
        By deleting peoples' discfiles.
        Next, came Hakawatha's 'fortune'
        (Didn't find it very funny)
        Then from mailer took a letter
        From a fellow network hacker
        (Who had penetrated ARPA
        All the way to Greenham Common -
        Though his prowling through the filestore
        Hadn't pleased the US Airforce -
        So this friend, this network hacker
        Had to flee to Argentina
        Where he works on simulations
        Simulations of their army's
        Capture of the Falkland Islands).
        Finally, my Hakawatha
        Started to type in a program.
        First, he thought for many minutes
        What the Devil he should call it
        So that later, he'd remember
        What it did and why he wrote it,
        Though for many, many minutes,
        Thought too long, because the system
        Timed him out for doing nothing
        Timed him out and warned him sternly
        (Like an irate bus inspector
        While you fumble for your ticket
        When you could have sworn you'd put it
        Safely in an inside pocket).
        So the wretched Hakawatha
        Had to start from the beginning
        Type the login and the password -
        Found the system even slower
        Even slower than the first time
        (Just as though some evil spirit
        Had reprogrammed all of UNIX
        In the language LISP or OCCAM -
        Which among the cognosenti
        Are not fames for running quickly
        Rather for their ponderous slowness
        Like a third year CS student
        Trying to make out a theorem
        Such as that of Church and Rosser).
        After many, many minutes
        After risking death from boredom
        On the screen, my Hakawatha,
        Saw a message from the Network
        Saying there were no free consoles,
        Telling him to just forget it,
        Telling him to come back later
        (Say, two-thirty in the morning
        Preferably a Sunday morning,
        Sunday, in the long vacation).
        But at this, my Hakawatha
        Spoke in language full of fury:
        "I would rather write in COBOL
        On a Sinclair ZX80"
        Thus, the Gods heard Hakawatha
        Heard the thunder of his anger
        Heard him damn the superuser
        To a post in Social Science
        Heard him damn the network to be
        Slowly boiled in caustic soda
        Heard him curse the sort of people
        Who use LISP instead of Ada)
        (Ada is a complex language
        Copyright, Defence Department
        It has got a formal syntax
        Rather longer than the Bible
        But semantically there's nothing
        But informal chitter-chatter.
        Reader! Use it at your peril)
        And the Gods took pity on him
        (Though they quite deplored the language
        Quite deplored the filthy language
        Utilised by Hakawatha)
        Brought about a console failure
        Of some wimp in Economics
        Freed a line so he could use it
        Made his screen display a message;
        "Sorry, we were only joking
        Please log in and type your password
        We'll be with you in a jiffy."
        Thus assuaged did Hakawatha
        Type his login and his password
        Read again the Jeremiads
        Of the manic superuser
        Read his fortune (still not funny)
        And prepared to type his program.



        Part II

        Hakawatha's Programming Style


        Still, alas, my Hakawatha
        Had no notion what to call it
        What to call this wretched program
        So that he'd remember later
        What it did and why he wrote it
        But the dreaded timeout threatened
        So to save himself from bother
        He just called it program7
        (Not a name that had much meaning
        Signifying nearly nothing
        - Though it has the real advantage 
        That it fits in with this metre)
        Meaning to mv it later
        When he'd thought of something better.
        Now the editor he entered
        Hakawatha then typed quickly
        Very, very, very quickly
        Swifter than a third-year student
        Trying to avoid his tutor
        Swifter than a Sun 'reporter'
        On the track of something smutty
        Like an eagle flew his fingers
        Only pausing several moments
        While he taxed his recollection
        For his algorithm's details
        These he knew but only vaguely
        (As the mist that on the sunrise
        Cloak the lofty mountain summit
        As the blur that s-nd-rs printers
        Make instead of underlining
        As the third year students' notion
        Of the proof of Turing's Theorem)
        These deliberations ended
        Hakawatha typed yet faster
        Missing quotes and semicolons
        Missing many closing brackets
        (Comments, these he left for later
        Till he understood the program
        Understood what he'd been doing)
        Confident that the compiler
        Would pick up the syntax errors
        Thus, the program grew like wildfire
        Like the spread of some contagious
        Malady, like AIDS or BASIC
        Or like the British unemployment
        In the reign of M-rg-r-t Th-tch-r.
        Hakawatha typed like fury
        Clatter, clatter went the keyboard
        Like a set of manic dentures
        So the morning, so the lunchtime
        So the afternoon receded
        All receded to oblivion
        Like the superuser's hairline
        When beset by third year students
        All intent to learn his password
        Till at last the stars were twinkling
        Till at last the pubs were open
        Till Security, reminded
        Tapped upon his door and warned him
        "Sorry, sir, but all the late workers
        Have to sign the sign-in book, sir."
        Even then, my Hakawatha
        Hardly heard what he was saying
        Very red and glazed his eyes were
        Cramped and aching were his fingers
        Void and rumbling was his stomach
        Cold and sweaty was his forehead
        Warm and humming was the console
        Like a cow with indigestion
        Thanked Security and told him
        That he'd do it "in a minute"
        That he'd "totally forgotten
        All that bureaucratic nonsense
        In the white-heat of creation"
        Asked to warn him if the building
        Burnt down in the next few minutes
        Thanked him for his "kind attention"
        Then ignoring him completely,
        Turning again and hit the keyboard
        With his swift and able fingers
        Till at last the night lay heavy
        Till at last the pubs were closing
        Till at last the job was finished



        Part III

        Hakawatha's Program Testing


        Next my Hakawatha summoned
        The appropriate compiler
        Asking it to take his program
        And attempt its execution
        Listing any syntax errors -
        Should by any chance there be some -
        In a file that he called "errors"
        (Stunning was the innovation
        Vouchsafed by this choice of naming)
        Asked it please to run in the background
        Swiftly grew the file named "errors"
        Till it seemed to grow much larger
        Than the file called "program7"
        Larger was the file named "errors"
        Larger than the largest mountain
        Larger than the cost of Trident
        Larger than the monstrous ego
        Of that God whom men call D------a
        Larger even than the software
        People call the UNIX mailer
        (Though, perhaps, exaggeration,
        Or that licence named poetic
        Leads me to commit an error
        Since we know the UNIX mailer
        To be bigger and more faulty
        Than the liner named Titanic)
        Worried now grew Hakawatha
        Tried to kill the background process
        Tried to bring it to the foreground
        Tried to say to the compiler
        "That'll do, guv, for the moment"
        All unheedingly the process
        Gobbled bytes like no-one's business
        Till it seemed as though the system
        Would collapse from sheer exhaustion
        From the quantity of page swaps
        Needed by this tireless process.
        Desperate grew Hakawatha
        Vivid, yet again, his curses
        Purpled the attendant shadows.
        Thus the Gods heard Hakawatha
        Listened to the foul language
        Thought that they had better stop it
        Firmly told the UNIX system
        Firmly, to stop all its nonsense
        Firmly, to abort the process.



        Part IV

        Hakawatha's Run-Time Error Trapping


        Now this program had a pointer
        Pointing to a record union
        Pointing sometimes to a REAL
        Or an INTEGER or BOOLEAN
        Pointing sometimes to a pointer
        To ARRAY of FILE of RECORD
        Each of which in turn had pointers
        Each of which, in mad recursion,
        Pointed madly at each other
        (Like a crowd of Sunday tabloids
        Pointing the accusing finger
        At each other's lack of morals
        Like a crowd of left-wing students
        All accusing one another
        Of revisionistic leanings)
        In this mess of pure confusion
        (with what seemed to Hakawatha
        At the time a stroke of genius
        But which now he couldn't clearly
        Understand why he had done it)
        He had placed a simple statement
        Placed a simple looking statement
        Reassigning the first pointer
        To some other, and he couldn't
        Quite remember where he'd put it,
        Couldn't lay his hands upon it,
        Felt that this might be the reason
        Why his program wasn't working
        Wasn't doing what he wanted.
        This occasioned some frustration
        Caused the noble Hakawatha
        To commit profane expletives
        Caused him to cry out "Debug her"
        (Or, I think that's what he shouted).
        "There are easier method, surely
        Methods for the computation
        Computation of the factorial!
        Stuff this for a game of soldiers!
        I am going to the staff club
        For a pint of Tennant's Lager"
        Thus departed Hakawatha.




-- 
Duncan Sinclair                     |  Try one    sinclair@cs.glasgow.ac.uk
Computing Science Student           |  of these   sinclair@uk.ac.glasgow.cs
University of Glasgow               |        ...!mcvax!ukc!glasgow!sinclair
Quote: "Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"