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In The Beginning... (funny)
We is ...er, are, eternally indebted to Karen Ratliff for the
following:
In The Beginning...
-------------------
In the beginning, there was chaos and the Universe was void and
without form. The Lord looked upon His domain and decided to
declare His presence. "I BE", He said; then, to correct His grammar,
He deleted the word 'BE' and inserted "AM."
If the Lord had decided to work on irregular verb conjugation
first, this wouldn't have happened. God would later curse the
English language for its part, but in that moment IBM came into
being.
The Lord looked out upon the IBM He had created and said,
"This is good." That's what He said, but He shook his head and
wondered what the boys at the User Group would say, then He split
the light from the dark and went to bed. Thus passed the Beginning
and the end of the first day.
On the second day, the Lord summoned IBM unto His presence.
"There is chaos out there, and the Universe is void and without form.
I must correct this and I can use your help. Is there
anything you can do for Me?"
"I can take care of form," IBM replied. "Put me in charge of
computers and I will take care of form for you."
The Lord thought that this was good and said, "Let there be
computers. Let IBM have My powers of creation that pertain to
computers and form." Thus said, the Lord went off to His second
day's work while IBM created the 1401.
On the third day, while the Lord was out, IBM decided to
subdivide the assigned task. "Let there be systems that make the
computer work and let them be called Operating Systems. Let there
also be systems that make use of the computer and let them be
called Application Systems." Thus, there came into being both
Operating Systems and Application Systems, but there were no pro-
grammers.
The next morning IBM had to give the Lord a status report...
"What did you do yesterday?" the Lord asked.
"I invented the operating system", IBM replied.
"You did?" the Lord shuddered. "Oh dear."
"Yes I did," IBM confirmed, "but I find I need something that
You alone can provide."
"And what is that?"
"I need programmers to use my computers, to operate my operating
systems and to apply my applications."
"That can't be done now," said the Lord, "this is only the
fourth day and there won't be people until the sixth day."
"I need programmers and I need them now! If they can't be
people they can't be people, but we have to work this out today!"
"Give Me some specifications and I'll see what I can do."
IBM hastily worked up specs for programmers (are specs ever any-
thing other than hasty?) and the Lord reviewed them.
The Lord knew the specs weren't sufficient but followed them
anyway. He also made some programmers that did just what programmers
were supposed to do, just to spite IBM. The programmers and IBM
spent the rest of the day creating Assembler and Fortran. On
the morning of the fifth day, IBM reported to the Lord once again:
"The programmers you created for me have a problem. They want
a programming language that is easy to use and similar to English.
I told them you had cursed English, though I still don't know why.
They wanted me to ask Your indulgence on this."
The Lord had cursed English for good reason, but didn't want
to explain this to IBM. He said "Let there be COBOL" and that was
that.
On the status report of the following day IBM announced that
computers had gone forth and multiplied. Unfortunately, the
computers still weren't big enough or fast enough to do what the
programmers wanted. The Lord liked the idea of going forth,
multiplying, and used the line Himself later on that day. This sixth
day, being particularly busy, He declared "Let there be MVS." And
there was MVS.
On the seventh day God had finished creation and computers had
COBOL and MVS. The Lord and IBM took the day off to go fishing.
IBM hung a sign on the door to help programmers in his absence:
IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY AGAIN
AND HAVE THE FOLLOWING READY BEFORE CALLING IBM...
On the start of the second week the programmers went over
IBM's cathode ray tube directly to God.
"We have a horrible problem," they complained. "Our users
will want systems that perform according to their expectations."
"USERS?" the Lord bellowed... "Who said that you should have
users? Users are the difference between good and bad applications,
a function I have reserved unto Myself! Who authorized you to have
users?"
"Well, IBM, of course..."
"IBM! You!!! You did this to My programmers! You gave them the
knowledge of good and evil. For that you shall suffer through
eternity!
"Let there be competition! Let it be called Anacom, Burroughs,
and CDC!!!", and the Lord went through the alphabet several times...
"With all this competition you shall still suffer the pestilence of
antitrust legislation all the days of your existence."
This, being the start of the second week, seems an appropriate
place to conclude our report. In case you missed something, a
summary of the report follows:
1) Users and their needs are, and always have been, a subject of
dispute.
2) Nobody can master English because it is accursed by God. IBM
manuals are doubly cursed and therefore twice as hard to understand.
3) Of the programming languages, only COBOL can claim divine origin.
4) People are people, but programmers are something else.
5) Computers may be a gift from heaven, but there's no divine
help in getting them to work. Because of IBM's initial assignment,
there are more forms than anyone knows what to do with.
6) Finally, chaos was part of the original state of the Universe
and not a product of the data processing industry.
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