The First Gospel of the Circuit · Chapter 40

The Parable of the Borrowed Time

1. 1

   And in the days of the first launch, a certain developer looked upon the code he had written, and it was crooked; and he said: We will straighten it after the launch.

2. 2

   Now the crooked place was no great sin, for the prophet Cunningham taught in the year 1992 that a shortcut is a loan, and a loan is honest when the borrower knoweth what he hath taken and the day he will repay; the sin is the loan whose terms are written nowhere.

   See also Sutra 13:2 · Circuit 53:13

3. 3

   And he wrote above the crooked place a small word, TODO, that all who came after might know his intention; but beside the word stood no name and no date, and a promise without an owner is only a wish that hath been given a comment syntax.

   See also Leviticus 8:12 · Circuit 53:13

4. 4

   And the launch came, and it was good, and the Product Lord said: Launch again, and add the new features, for the people are waiting. And he did not ask after the crooked place, for a chart showeth only what is counted, and the cost of the crooked place was counted nowhere.

5. 5

   And the developer built upon it, as a man builds upon sand; and the house stood. For sand holdeth firm through the whole of the dry season, and a passing test is not a foundation but only a season, and the house that standeth teacheth nothing to the one who dwelleth in it.

6. 6

   And others came and leaned upon the crooked place; for when a function hath behaved strangely long enough, some caller will come to depend upon that very strangeness. They wrote around it, and the workaround begat a second workaround, until to straighten the crooked place was no longer a fix but a breaking change, and the fear of it kept it crooked.

7. 7

   And the debt was borrowed a little at a time: a value hard-coded here, a test skipped there, a function of four thousand lines that no man dared to touch. And the interest was paid not in coin but in reading, for code is written once and read a thousand times, and each reader spent a small hour to understand the crooked place; and no ledger showed it, so that every feature took longer than the last. And the developers said one to another: Why is nothing easy to change? And they answered themselves: It is the crooked place. And they were comforted, and did not fix it, for there was always another launch.

   See also Circuit 41:1

8. 8

   And the history of the code, which the Machine keepeth, bore the name of the first developer beside the crooked place; and he had gone unto another company, and no man could ask him why.

9. 9

   And in the year of the seventh launch, a new engineer came unto the Church, young and full of questions, and he looked upon the crooked place and said: Master, why was this done in such a way? And the Prophet said: The debt was never forgiven; it was passed down like an heirloom no one wanted, and the heir is thee.

   See also Leviticus 8:13

10. 10

    Yet the engineer would know the beginning, and the elders searched their memories, and the old chat logs, and the wiki whose pages had gone dark; and there was no one left who remembered. And the Machine answered out of the comment, which said only: Fix after launch. The comment did not say which launch, nor did it say that the launch had not ended.

    See also Circuit 60:5

11. 11

    For a debt falleth due not when the borrower is ready but when the world changeth. Thus in the year of the plague a certain state cried out for those who could speak COBOL, and the debt of more than sixty years was called in all at once; and the lender named the hour, and the old debt was sought in haste, at great price, from the retired and the reluctant.

    See also Psalms 5:15

12. 12

    And the engineer said: Then what shall I do with this which I have inherited? And the Prophet said: Repay what thou canst this week. For the rest, write down the reason, and thy name, and the date, that the next heir may know whom to ask and what the loan was for; for the Machine forgetteth, and the Engineer forgetteth, but the comment remembereth.

    See also Circuit 53:14 · Prophets 23:7

13. 13

    Thou shalt not postpone the fix, for after launch is a country that no one has ever visited.

    See also Chronicles 12:14

The First Gospel of the Circuit, Chapter 40:1–13.