I will put Chaos into lines of Code
Feeling a bit silly tonight, so, with huge apologies to Edna St. Vincent Millay, I'm getting my poetry on.
I will put Chaos into lines of Code
And keep him there; and let him thence entail
If he be lucky; let him twist, and fail
Test, sense, and design --- his server load
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this app module, where, in pious rape,
I hold his essence and amorphous shape,
Till he with Objects mingles and combines.
Soon are the plugins, the views of our expansion,
His arrogance, our awful servitude:
I have him. He is harder than scansion
And something simple not yet understood;
I shall accept even an elision
Or gap. I will try to open his Code.
Here's Millay's poem, "I Will Put Chaos Into Fourteen Lines", one of my favorites.
"Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world. To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy."
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
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