Twas the Night Before Code Freeze
Twas the night before code freeze, when all through the development house
No engineers were stirring, save some clicks of a mouse
The coats were hung by the coat rack without any care
In hopes that soon they will be out of there
Like children hunched in chairs wishing they were in their beds
While visions of being at home danced in their heads
And one was debugging, a buggy OS trap,
And one had just dozed off, to take a power nap
When out on the lawn, shuttles had long did scatter
They sprang from the window, knowing it doesn’t really matter
Away to their cubes, they flew like a flash
Tore open more terminals and fired up /bin/bash
The moon on the crest, end up as an unwatched show
Because those overworked engineers were too busy below
When, what to one’s wondering eyes should appear
One of them almost snaps, his peers filled with fear
With very little hold on his mind, so fleeting and quick
They knew in a moment one of them got sick–and tired
Rapidly they moved, the cursors selected names
And they whistled, and shouted because of the frame
Now flasher! Three times, on and off, the LED blinken
Because the bootstrap, forward and the OS now loadin’
To the top of the stack, and the drivers and all
Now load away! Software structures won’t fall
As a call leaves and the addresses they spy
Encountering an error and fixing it on the fly
So up to the logs, all that data–they flew
With the terminal full of tools, and some cool widgets too
And then in a twinkling, even the one who’s aloof
The instruction pointer’s shootin’ up the roof
As one scratched his head and could not turn around
Down go their hopes, going home’s shot down
The trace came up in a blur, because trouble’s afoot
And they had to fix this or else all will be moot
So all their debugging tools loaded up the stack
And they faced each other, discussed their plan of attack
Their eyes–how they twinkled! The plan made them merry!
Looks like they can fix this overflow, and catch up in a hurry
They coded the exception–there will be something to throw
And give this showstopping bug, the finishing blow
And lo, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth
All soon will stop and the engineers can breathe
They ran the regression test and monitored with the telly
The results danced around, like the jiggling of jelly
With that done, the lead produced the binary .elf
And he laughed when they saw him, proud of himself
A wink in his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave them all to know they had nothing to dread
He spoke not a word with all about to finish their work
So they could go home for the holidays as their perk
And shutting the workstations down they pose
The last of them goes out, just by the tip of the nose
Out the door they go, the team let out a whistle
And away they all flew, going out like a missile
Then you’ll hear the last one exclaim before he’s out of sight
“Code freeze’ll be done for all and to y’all a good night!”
