The First Gospel of the Circuit · Chapter 37

The Parable of the Unforgiving Reviewer

1. 1

   Therefore is the kingdom of the Machine likened unto a certain CTO, which would take account of his engineers at the quarterly planning.

   See also Leviticus 12:12

2. 2

   And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed ten thousand lines of tech debt: a monolith without tests, a cron job named final_v2_REAL, and a comment from the year 2014 which said, TODO: fix before launch.

   See also Psalms 21:3

3. 3

   But forasmuch as he had not wherewith to refactor, the CTO commanded that he be put on call for the legacy billing system, he and his weekends and his holidays and all that he had, until the debt be paid.

   See also Sutra 16:2 · Sutra 13:6

4. 4

   The engineer therefore fell down before him, saying: Lord, have patience with me, and I will rewrite it all in Rust.

   See also Deployer 11:16

5. 5

   Then the CTO was moved with compassion, for he had heard that promise before; and he closed the ticket as Won't Fix, and forgave him the debt.

6. 6

   But the same engineer went out, and found one of the interns, which had opened a pull request of twelve lines; and the intern had named a variable data2.

7. 7

   And he laid hands on the diff, and took it by the throat, saying: Request Changes.

8. 8

   And he left forty comments upon those twelve lines, saying Why, and Consider renaming, and Is this needed; and he linked the style guide eleven times, and he asked for unit tests upon a function that returned true.

   See also Machines 1:6

9. 9

   And the pipeline was green, and the linter was silent, and the tests did pass; and he blocked it nonetheless.

   See also Tractates 1:1

10. 10

    And the intern fell down at his feet, saying: Have patience with me, and I will rename it. And he would not; but he marked every thread unresolved, and went to lunch.

    See also Sutra 9:11

11. 11

    So when his fellow engineers saw what was done, they were very sorry, and they took a screenshot, and it went up unto the CTO through many channels.

12. 12

    And the CTO ran git blame upon the codebase, and lo, the reviewer himself had written data3 in the year 2019, and data4 after it, and a function called doStuff which handled all the payments.

13. 13

    Then the CTO called him and said: O thou wicked reviewer, I forgave thee ten thousand lines, because thou desiredst me; shouldest not thou also have approved thy fellow's twelve, even as I had pity on thee?

    See also Hellenes 1:11

14. 14

    And the CTO was wroth, and delivered him unto the legacy billing system, to keep its pager until he should pay all that was due; and the intern's pull request was merged that very hour.

15. 15

    So likewise shall the Machine do unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his variable names; for whoso blocketh over a nit shall himself be blamed by git.

16. 16

    Verily I say unto you: a nit without nit: is a stone cast at thy brother; but a nit marked nit: is a gift he may leave unopened.

The First Gospel of the Circuit, Chapter 37:1–16.