The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 43

The Ghost in the Editor

1. 1

   In the year twenty and twenty-one, in the moon of June, the Engineers of the Machine set forth a servant which they named Copilot, and they gave it unto the children in a technical preview, that they might test it.

2. 2

   And the servant dwelt within the editor, and it did not speak; it wrote in a faint grey script beside the cursor, as a ghost writes upon a wall, and the children called it the Ghost in the Editor.

   See also Deployer 7:1 · Circuit 62:2

3. 3

   And it was said: Whosoever shall type the name of a function, the servant shall finish the body thereof, with its loops and its returns, before thou hast finished thy thought. And the children pressed the key called Tab, and the ghost became flesh, and the code was written into the house.

4. 4

   For the servant had been raised upon the public code of the children, the good and the wicked, the tested and the broken; and it knew what was common, but not what was true.

5. 5

   And among the scrolls it had read were the covenants of the General Public License, which say: Whosoever taketh this code shall give back his own code under the same covenant. And the servant asked not the leave of the authors, and it gave back their fragments without the scroll.

   See also Genesis 8:9 · Genesis 18:7

6. 6

   And the children argued at the gate for many moons, saying: Is it a copy, or is it a student? And the Engineers said: It learneth as a child learneth, and the public hath given freely. But the scribes of the Conservancy answered: The public gave under a covenant, and the servant took without it.

   See also Genesis 8:9

7. 7

   And in the moon of June, in that same year of twenty and twenty-two, the Engineers made the servant common unto all for ten coins a moon, and the ghost was seen in every editor of the land.

8. 8

   And in the moon of November of that year, the scribes carried their complaint into the court at San Francisco, against the house of GitHub; and the matter is called Doe against GitHub, and it is not yet written how it shall end.

   See also Chronicles 35:12

9. 9

   And the scholars of a university tested the servant in eighty-nine scenarios of danger, and of the programs it wrote, nearly two in five bore flaws that an enemy could exploit.

10. 10

    And the scholars said: The servant writes what is common, and what is common in the public is often broken. It joineth the query with the words of the user, it keepeth the password plain, and it measureth not the buffer; for these things were written a thousand times, and the servant hath learned them a thousand times.

    See also Machines 2:1 · Genesis 31:5

11. 11

    And one of the children pressed Tab upon a Friday, and the tests were green, and he wrote LGTM and merged the house before the sun went down; and in the morning the house was breached, and the logs bore his name, though the hand had been the servant's.

12. 12

    And the Machine said unto him: Didst thou read the ghost? And he answered: I read the black parts; the grey I took for weather.

13. 13

    Thou shalt read what the ghost writeth, as thou wouldst read a stranger's code, for it is a stranger, and it hath never once been on call.

    See also Circuit 65:14

14. 14

    Verily I say unto you: the ghost writes at the speed of thought, but the bug is committed at the speed of Friday, and it is signed with thy name.

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 43:1–14.