A Dayum-ing Discovery

A manuscript found in the attic of Pablo Neruda's erstwhile home has confirmed what to many of us was plain as daylight.

The truth behind his famous poem 'Tonight I can Write the Saddest Lines'.

The manuscript confirms the fact that the original was written by Neruda while he was working as a contractor for a well known software company of the time. No names. Originally titled 'Tonight I can Create the Weirdest Bugs' , this was re-written by Neruda later to cater to the more mainstream non-geeky audience.

This, of course, made business sense as the mainstream poetry loving audience is a superset of the 'geek' part( that sentence should tell you to which part Yours Truly belongs).

The manuscript (actually a tape backup) is faithfully reproduced below.

Analysts point out that the heart rending incident of his module being taken away from him ( for reasons of stability ) and getting reassigned to a colleague created an indelible impression on the young Neruda.

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Tonight I can create the weirdest bugs.

Write, for example, 'IF todayIsFullMoon THEN CrashAndBurn()'

The build goes on, and the loops never end.

Tonight I can create the weirdest bugs,

I made the bugs, and sometimes my teammates too.

Through nights like this I hammered away at the keyboard,

I tore my hair out again under the endless call stacks.

They made the bugs, sometimes I did too.

How could they have not, for they had to work with my code too.

Tonight I can has create (cheese)bu(r)g(er)s

To think that I have lost the reference. To feel that I have lost the handle.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without coffee.

And the irony falls to the cheek, like cow to pasture.

What does it matter that I cannot get my module to compile,

The night is long and my manager is not with me.

The same electrons making some code run (elsewhere),

The night is starry, but tonight my code won't run.

This is all. In the distance someone is snoring. In the next cubicle.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her (my module).

My search tries to find her as though to refactor her,

My heart looks for her, and there she is - assigned to somebody else.

The same electrons, making the same code run (but,)

The environment, of that time, is no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before I joined.

Her curly braces, her indented body. Her infinite loops.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her,

Development is so short, maintenance is so long.

Because through nights like this one I banged my head against her

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last core dump that she makes me suffer

and these the last bugs I create in this job.

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The re-written (and better known) version is freely available, e.g here

Thank God Neruda is gone, otherwise my body would never have been found. Though I do have a sneaking suspicion that I face the same threat from people who read this.