The Beatles Perform In Nerdhaven

Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly,
There’s not half the files there used to be,
And there’s a milestone
hanging over me
The system crashed so suddenly.
Where my data’s gone, I don’t know,
it’s gone astray
I pushed something wrong
and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.
Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
I knew my data was all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.

Eleanor Rigby
Sits at the keyboard
And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
Finding some code
That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Guru MacKenzie
Typing the lines of a program that no one will run;
Isn’t it fun?
Look at him working,
Munching some chips as he waits for the code to compile;
It takes a while…
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Eleanor Rigby
Crashes the system and loses 6 hours of work;
Feels like a jerk.
Guru MacKenzie
Wiping the crumbs off the keys as he types in the code;
Nothing will load.
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

He’s a real UNIX Man
Sitting in his UNIX LAN
Making all his UNIX plans
For nobody.
Knows the blocksize from du
Cares not where /dev/null goes to
Isn’t he a bit like you
And me?
UNIX Man, please listen
My lpd is missin’
UNIX Man
The wo-o-o-orld is at your command.
He’s as wise as he can be
Uses lex and yacc and C
UNIX Man, can you help me At all?
UNIX Man, don’t worry
Test with time, don’t hurry
UNIX Man
The new kernel boots, just like you had planned.
He’s a real UNIX Man
Sitting in his UNIX LAN
Making all his UNIX plans For nobody …
Making all his UNIX plans For nobody.

When I find my code in tons of trouble,
Friends and colleagues come to me,
Speaking words of wisdom:
“Write in C.”
As the deadline fast approaches,
And bugs are all that I can see,
Somewhere, someone whispers:
“Write in C.”
Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
LOGO’s dead and buried,
Write in C.
I used to write a lot of FORTRAN,
For science it worked flawlessly.
Try using it for graphics!
Write in C.
If you’ve just spent nearly 30 hours,
Debugging some assembly,
Soon you will be glad to
Write in C.
Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, yeah, Write in C.
BASIC’s not the answer.
Write in C.
Write in C, Write in C
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
Pascal won’t quite cut it.
Write in C.

Something in the way it fails,
Defies the algorithm’s logic!
Something in the way it coredumps…
I don’t want to leave it now
I’ll fix this problem somehow
Somewhere in the memory I know,
A pointer’s got to be corrupted.
Stepping in the debugger will show me…
I don’t want to leave it now
I’m too close to leave it now
You’re asking me can this code go?
I don’t know, I don’t know…
What sequence causes it to blow?
I don’t know, I don’t know…
Something in the initializing code?
And all I have to do is think of it!
Something in the listing will show me…
I don’t want to leave it now
I’ll fix this tonight I vow!
If you can’t recall the melody…