DP Man
(sung to the tune Piano Man by Billy Joel)

Its eight oclock on a Monday,
The programming crowd staggers in,
Theres a user by my terminal,
With drool running off of his chin.
He says, Son, can you code me some processing,
Im not really sure what I want,
But its short and its sweet and its NP-complete
And it has to be finished by lunch.

Chorus:

They say, Write us some code, youre the DP man,
Write us some code today,
Cause we need this report for the CEO,
And he wants it by yesterday.

Now, Tim at the consoles a friend of mine,
He bumps up my priority,
And hell bum me a smoke or some Twinkies and Coke,
But theres someplace that hed rather be.
He said, Paul, I believe its a dead-end here,
As the smile ran away from his face,
But Im sure I could find work with IBM,
If I could get out of this place.

Now, Mark is a frustrated racing man,
Whose license is riding on luck,
And hes talking with Jeff who scares mopeds to death,
With those forty-inch tires on his truck.
Well, its pretty good code for a Monday,
And my team leader gives me a smirk,
Cause he knows that its me theyll be coming to see,
When they find out that it didnt work.

And the keyboard, it clicks like a tickertape
And the CRT screams like a jet,
And they walk by my cube and throw pens at my tube,
And say, Man, aint they fixed that thing yet ?
And the old hands are screaming to standardize,
As the patches and kludges pile up,
Cause this place is a hackers own paradise:
Its a string-handling-in-Fortran shop.

Greg Gerke