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may-cease-to-code.md

When I have fears that I may cease to code (2013)

I wrote this in December 2013, as a parody of Keats' sonnet<br>"When I have fears that I may cease to be."

Rereading it now, the buzzwords it reaches for — spiders, the cloud,<br>"social," crowdfunding — have quietly aged into a time capsule. I was<br>afraid I'd never get to code. What happened instead is stranger: I<br>stopped writing it myself. The fear came true, just not the way I'd<br>braced for — the code still comes, I just don't type it anymore.

When I have fears that I may cease to code<br>Before my fingers has glean'd teeming byte<br>Before high perf'rmance softwares, in unicode<br>Hold like rich Apple the full-mouthful bite;<br>When I behold, upon the spider's starr'd lace,<br>Huge cloudy symbols of a social fund,<br>And feel that I may never find to trace<br>Their accounts, with the cryptic secrets of defend<br>And when I feel, fair creature of the shell!<br>That I shall never look upon #root though,<br>Never have relish in the ghost shell<br>Of unreflecting Lisp;-( then on the window<br>Of the world wide web I connect, and type,<br>Till Lisp and Java to open source do hype.

Written 2013-12-08. Original Google Doc.

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