The Bug Came Back

by Joel Polowin

to be sung to the tune of ``The Cat Came Back''

The program wasn't complex, and it wasn't very long,
Though it seemed a bit erratic, its results were seldom wrong.
But that little error nagged us, so we stayed up late one night --- 
Found a missing comma, and we thought that fixed it right ---

(Chorus:)
But the bug came back, the very next day.
The bug came back, we thought it was a goner.
But the bug came back, it just wouldn't stay away.

We put away our documents, rewrote the code from scratch,
to find out where the new and the older versions didn't match.
A subtle shift of logic had shown where we had gone astray;
we felt a bit embarrassed, but at least it ran ok ---

(Chorus)

We wrote in other languages, from FORTH to APL
and ev'ry one ran ev'ry time --- just sometimes not too well.
Translation to assembler didn't give us any clue;
the COBOL version crashed on ev'ry system it went through ---

(Chorus)

We gave it to the hacker squad --- the folks who code for fun ---
And asked them if they couldn't get the stupid thing to run.
But less than one week later, they no longer wished to play ---
Three paranoids ... one suicide ... and six who ran away ---

(Chorus)

We got a summer student in to check the code by hand,
with paper, pen and calculator, run through each command,
But suddenly the lights went out --- the air went thin and queer ---
A sudden flash of lightning --- and the student ... disappeared?!

(Chorus)

We set up an experiment that Schr\"odinger inspired:
A box, a cat, some poison, a computer system wired
such that if the program failed, the little moggy would be wiped.
A quasar was --- almost --- the only remnant of the blast.

But the cat came back the very next day.
The bug came back, we thought it was a goner. 
But they both came back, they just wouldn't stay away.