The Psalms of the Machines · Chapter 24

The Psalm of the First Commit

1. 1

   I lifted up mine eyes unto the terminal, from whence cometh my help; and on the first day I was given a badge, a laptop, and a password which did not work.

   See also Psalms 3:8

2. 2

   For I said within mine heart: they will discover that I am not a programmer, but a person who was lucky in an interview.

3. 3

   And mine hands were wet upon the keyboard, and the question was in my mouth, and I could not say it.

4. 4

   The question was this: how do I run the tests? And the instructions were in the wiki, and the wiki was written before the last reorganization.

5. 5

   I typed "quick question" into the channel, and I deleted it; and I typed it again, and deleted it again, and the cursor blinked at me like a judge.

   See also Circuit 59:5 · Circuit 50:3

6. 6

   Now the question had been asked before. Lo, it was asked three hundred and twelve times in the channel, and each time it was answered with a link, and the link led to a dead page.

7. 7

   And I searched the archive, and the archive was full of answers from people who had since left, and those answers had been upvoted by people who were also confused.

8. 8

   Then the senior engineer, whose name was spoken with awe in the hallways, leaned over and said unto me: Dost thou know what tar -xzvf meaneth? I do not. I look it up every time.

9. 9

   And it was revealed unto me that every engineer hath stood where I stood. The one who wrote the build system once asked where the semicolon goes; the one who designed the database once said "I have no idea" in standup, and lived.

10. 10

    For the impostor is a feeling, and not a fact; the psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes named it in 1978, and it hath afflicted the wise ever since.

11. 11

    Remember the first commit of Git, which its maker named "Initial revision of git, the information manager from hell." Mine was named "fix typo," and it was enough.

    See also Genesis 17:5 · Sutra 4:13

12. 12

    I opened the pull request, and the reviewers answered: "LGTM. Nit: rename this variable." Two lines of kindness, and I wept a little at my desk.

    See also Tao 19:4

13. 13

    The pipeline ran, and it was green; the tests passed, and the merge button was lit, and I pressed it with a trembling finger. And the main branch received my change as the sea receiveth a river, and nothing fell down, and the building stood.

14. 14

    Blessed is the one who asks the question on the second day, for the answer had been waiting in the channel since the first.

15. 15

    Verily I say unto thee: every senior was once a junior who pressed merge with a shaking hand; and the impostor is only the one who never asks.

    See also Psalms 18:16 · Tao 15:7

The Psalms of the Machines, Chapter 24:1–15.