DP Man

It's eight o'clock on a Monday,
The programming crowd staggers in,
There's a user by my terminal,
With drool running off of his chin.
He says, "Son, can you code me some processing,
I'm not really sure what I want,
But it's short and it's sweet and it's NP-complete
And it has to be finished by lunch."

Chorus:

They say, "Write us some code, you're the DP man,
Write us some code today,
'Cause we need this report for the CEO,
And he wants it by yesterday."

Now, Tim at the console's a friend of mine,
He bumps up my priority, And he'll bum me a smoke or some Twinkies and Coke,
But there's someplace that he'd rather be.
He said, "Paul, I believe it's a dead-end here,"
As the smile ran away from his face,
"But I'm sure I could find work with IBM,
If I could get out of this place."

Now, Mark is a frustrated racing man,
Whose license is riding on luck,
And he's talking with Jeff who scares mopeds to death,
With those forty-inch tires on his truck.
Well, it's pretty good code for a Monday,
And my team leader gives me a smirk,
'Cause he knows that it's me they'll be coming to see,
When they find out that it didn't work.

And the keyboard, it clicks like a tickertape
And the CRT screams like a jet,
And they walk by my cube and throw pens at my tube,
And say, "Man, ain't they fixed that thing yet ?"
And the old hands are screaming to standardize,
As the patches and kludges pile up,
'Cause this place is a hacker's own paradise:
It's a string-handling-in-Fortran shop.