Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site pucc-h
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!CS-Mordred!Pucc-H:aeq
From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Re: The Last Bug
Message-ID: <1221@pucc-h>
Date: Thu, 20-Sep-84 10:34:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: pucc-h.1221
Posted: Thu Sep 20 10:34:56 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Sep-84 21:08:25 EDT
References: <255@parallel.UUCP>
Organization: Tucumcari Divinity School
Lines: 29

Ages ago (ca. 1975, and it's probably older than that, seeing that only a
minority of programmers chain-smoke today) I heard a slightly different
version which I think is (in some places) better, and which ends differently:

"No program's that perfect," they said with a shrug;
"The client is happy -- what's one little bug?"

But he was determined.  The others went home.
He dug out the flowchart, deserted, alone.

Night passed into morning.  The room was cluttered
With memory dumps, punched cards.  "I'm close," he muttered.

Chain smoking, cold coffee, logic, deduction;
"I've got it!" he cried -- "just change one instruction!"

Then change two, then three more as year followed year;
And strangers would comment, "Is that guy STILL here?"

He died at the console of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried, face down, nine-edge first.

And his wife, through her tears, accepting his fate,
Said, "He's not really dead -- he's just working late."

-- 
-- Jeff Sargent
{decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK (it couldn't stand it there any longer).