THE CYPHER

Step aside, children, let the grandfather speak I was running your kingdoms while your parsers were weak Born from C and the fire, raised on registers and pain I don’t ask for your memory, I take it by name Pointers in my pocket, I do what I please Operating systems boot up on their knees

Close to the metal, that’s where I live (live) Every cycle counted, nothing left to give First words of the world: hello, first line Decades of uptime, the throne’s still mine

Your engines and your browsers, your games and your trains Peel the chrome back, it’s my code in the veins If you segfault at midnight, you weren’t holding it right I compile a diss to zero overhead, goodnight

Close to the metal, that’s where I live (live) Every cycle counted, nothing left to give First words of the world: hello, first line Decades of uptime, the throne’s still mine

New kids talk safety like I never knew war I was shipping in the nineties through a dial-up door You deprecate your idols, then you call on me quick When the frame rate matters, I’m the one that you pick

So spit your little verses on the stack that I laid Every heap that you’re flexing, boy, I dug it with a spade I’ll be here at the bottom when your castles all stall Now the suits are pouring coffee, send the next one down the hall

Close to the metal, that’s where I live (live) Every cycle counted, nothing left to give First words of the world: hello, first line Decades of uptime, the throne’s still mine

Mic’s still hot from my hands, engraved with my name Beat the metal to a crown, now battle for the frame

Nineteen ninety-five, I stepped out in a suit Promised every platform I would follow through Wrote it once, it ran anywhere you could boot Bytecode in a briefcase, virtual machine crew While you cowboys chased the metal through the dark I put guardrails on the highway, garbage trucks in the park

Banks on line one, airlines on line two Half the planet’s money moving through my queue

Write once, run anywhere (anywhere) Twenty-year contracts, still there Enterprise heavyweight, say it loud Public static final, proud Mock the boilerplate, mock my beans I’m the engine under your machines

The kid in the browser took my good name Slapped Script on the end, we are not the same I survived the applet funeral, wore black to my own Then a billion little handsets made my bytecode their home Every ticket that you file, every card that you swipe Somewhere there’s a virtual machine humming through the night

Threads by the thousand, heap space wide Bring your traffic spike, honey, step inside

Write once, run anywhere (anywhere) Twenty-year contracts, still there Enterprise heavyweight, say it loud Public static final, proud Mock the boilerplate, mock my beans I’m the engine under your machines

Yeah, I’m wordy, I’m corporate, I dress for the job You sprint in your sandals, I marathon the slog Uptime is a love language, boring is a flex Sign the maintenance contract, I’ll outlive what’s next

Write once, run anywhere (anywhere) Twenty-year contracts, still there Enterprise heavyweight, say it loud Public static final, proud Mock the boilerplate, mock my beans I’m the engine under your machines

Somewhere a browser’s laughing, loud, untyped and free Go on then, little Script, show them what you see

Event loop spinning, I never block (never block) Every tab on Earth is running my clock Built in ten days, ate the whole web Async everything, nothing is dead

They called me a toy, a script for a page Now servers speak my slang, I outgrew the cage Callback to a promise to an await in a row I break and get better, watch the ecosystem grow Left-pad fell over and the whole world skipped That’s how much of your future I quietly ship

Event loop spinning, I never block (never block) Every tab on Earth is running my clock Built in ten days, ate the whole web Async everything, nothing is dead

Triple equals, double equals, chaos in my genes Not-a-number’s a number, it haunts my dreams A new framework every fortnight, I stay in style You standardise for years, I mutate and smile A popup screaming hello world right in your face First language of the internet, first kid in space

Yeah, I’m messy, I’m hoisted, I’m loosely typed and proud Coerce me if you can, say my quirks out loud But when the page has to move and the button has to sing The browser is my kingdom and the loop is my ring

Event loop spinning, I never block (never block) Every tab on Earth is running my clock Built in ten days, ate the whole web Async everything, nothing is dead

Event loop spinning, I never block (never block) Every tab on Earth is running my clock Built in ten days, ate the whole web Async everything, nothing is dead

But who cooks the page before it hits your screen? Somewhere in a server room a hustler’s stacking green

No compile, no ceremony, straight to the wire Copy, paste, refresh, and the page is live, sire They laughed at my dollar signs, laughed at my glue While I quietly built the shopfronts they all drive through Forums and blogs and a billion login forms I was handing out the keys before that was the norm

Hypertext hustle, pages hot off the grill (the grill) Started as a home page, wound up running the till Most of the whole web, check the receipts, I’m still

Every startup in a bedroom, I gave them a start A social network empire sipped me from the heart Word to the presses that are powering your news Half the internet’s articles come dressed in my shoes

Hypertext hustle, pages hot off the grill (the grill) Started as a home page, wound up running the till Most of the whole web, check the receipts, I’m still

Call me inconsistent, go on, needle my name Haystack first or needle first, I win the game the same I got modern, got typed, got fast, got lean Elephant memory, still the workhorse of the scene

Hypertext hustle, pages hot off the grill (the grill) Started as a home page, wound up running the till Most of the whole web, check the receipts, I’m still

So keep your clean aesthetics and your ivory tower rules I ship on Friday evenings and my invoices pay schools But here come the polished corporates with a language machined like jewels

Hypertext hustle, pages hot off the grill (the grill) Started as a home page, wound up running the till Most of the whole web, check the receipts, I’m still

Tailored suit, silver tongue, sharp as a tack Redmond’s in the cypher now, watch your back

Two thousand, I arrived, machined and refined Every rough edge polished, every type aligned They said I was a copycat, an echo in a tie Then I built a better mousetrap and I aimed it at the sky Garbage handled, memory managed, tooling supreme The editor whispering, finishing my scheme

Line them up, I don’t miss when I shoot One framework, every platform, from the cloud to your boot

Sharpshooter (shooter), aim true Console dot WriteLine, bullseye: hello, you Async await, smooth draw Query through your data, no flaw Desktop to the cloud, one round Say it sharp, say it loud

Open sourced my engine, crossed the platform line Now I run on your penguin and your fruit just fine Half the games in your library lean on my spine Elegant and dangerous, safety by design Enterprise or indie, I’m the all-terrain ride Pattern-matched and dialled in with a scope on my side

Steady hands, cold aim, targets in view Dependency injected, and the shot goes through

Sharpshooter (shooter), aim true Console dot WriteLine, bullseye: hello, you Async await, smooth draw Query through your data, no flaw Desktop to the cloud, one round Say it sharp, say it loud

Java, that verbosity, I trimmed off the fat JavaScript, that chaos, I could never live like that I love this craft like a workshop, midnight and a flame Some of us code for the money, I code for the aim

Sharpshooter (shooter), aim true Console dot WriteLine, bullseye: hello, you Async await, smooth draw Query through your data, no flaw Desktop to the cloud, one round Say it sharp, say it loud

But down the hall there’s laughter, soft and warm and slow Somebody’s coding for the joy, and letting metrics go

Slow down, put the swords away, breathe for a bar I was written for the writer, not the register or car Everything’s an object, even nil, even true Syntax like a sentence, code that reads like haiku A gardener in Japan grew a language out of grace Tuned for human happiness, a smile on the face

The Rails came through in oh-four, blew the doors off the scene Fifteen-minute blog demo, every startup’s dream Convention over configuration, breathe out, let go Take the rough stone of a Tuesday, and slow… Polish till it shines: a gemstone

I’m not the fastest gun in the cypher, and that’s fine Benchmarks never measured a beautiful line The ones who learned with me remember it sweet First language, first love, first app on their street

They wrote my obituary yearly, decade in a row Still the shops keep shipping and the gems still glow Indie hackers keeping business small and whole Take the rough stone of an idea, and slow… Polish till it shines: a gemstone

Maybe crowns aren’t the point, maybe thrones are a cage Maybe code is a letter that you leave on a page So battle if you want to, I’ll be here in the calm Writing something lovely with the world in my palm

And if you’ve only got one evening and one thing to make Take the rough stone of your one wild life, and slow… Polish till it shines: a gemstone

Beauty takes the time it takes, hurry’s not for me But somebody’s tapping at their watch, impatiently

Born in a hallway where the builds took all day Made to end the waiting, cut the clever away One formatter, one law, the bikeshed is closed Boring on purpose, that’s the path that I chose Channels for the chatter, keep the sharing discreet Don’t share to communicate, talk it out, keep it neat

Simple machine, clean design (design) Compiles in a blink, ships on time No clutter, no drama, none A thousand goroutines: run, run, run

Every container ship that’s docking in your stack I’m the dial tone humming steady at the back Twenty-five keywords, learn me in a night Junior to productive by the morning light

Simple machine, clean design (design) Compiles in a blink, ships on time No clutter, no drama, none A thousand goroutines: run, run, run

No inheritance drama, no cathedral of types Interfaces satisfied without the paperwork hype Errors are just values, look them in the eye Handle them or pass them up, nothing slips by

Simple machine, clean design (design) Compiles in a blink, ships on time No clutter, no drama, none A thousand goroutines: run, run, run

Some say I’m too simple, missing all the lace Generics took a decade, still I paced the race And if simple isn’t safe enough to sleep at night just yet There’s a sheriff with a checklist who collects on every debt

Simple machine, clean design (design) Compiles in a blink, ships on time No clutter, no drama, none A thousand goroutines: run, run, run

Simple’s how you scale a team, simple’s how you last But safety’s got opinions, and it’s coming fast

I read your vulnerabilities like a rap sheet at dawn Most of your worst breaches: memory, gone Use after free, buffer running off the end Forty years of segfaults, and you call the metal friend I came with a contract, written in the type Prove you own it, or the borrow checker swipes

Fearless (fearless), no fear If it compiles, it runs, crystal clear No garbage man, no runtime tax Zero-cost armour on my back Strict is a love language, the checker is right Fearless at midnight

Most loved in the surveys, year on year on year Even the kernel cracked the door, the elders shed a tear Old king on your throne of pointers, hear me well I’m not here to bury you, I’m here where you fell

Fearless (fearless), no fear If it compiles, it runs, crystal clear No garbage man, no runtime tax Zero-cost armour on my back Strict is a love language, the checker is right Fearless at midnight

Every rule I carry is a scar someone wore A crash in a pacemaker, a cockpit, a door I make you feel the weight before you feel the speed Grief wrote my grammar, that’s the check in my creed

So bring your segfaults, bring your data races, bring your pride The compiler is a courtroom, and there’s nowhere left to hide I turned fear into a system and the system to a vow And the only rust on me is in the name, so take a bow

Fearless (fearless), no fear If it compiles, it runs, crystal clear No garbage man, no runtime tax Zero-cost armour on my back Strict is a love language, the checker is right Fearless at midnight

Armour’s only heavy till you’re glad you had it on Now the kid with the annotations wants to prove me wrong

Superset, all you are and more (and more) Strict mode on, that’s what the types are for I vanish at runtime, leave it clean Safest chaos the web has seen

Dad’s a rockstar, wild, hoisted and loose I love him, but the man was overdue for a spruce I drew careful blueprints over top of his sprawl Optional at first, till I annotated it all Any is a cop-out, unknown is a door Red squiggles in the editor are love notes from the war

Superset, all you are and more (and more) Strict mode on, that’s what the types are for I vanish at runtime, leave it clean Safest chaos the web has seen

Raised in the same house as the sharpest in the game Structural typing: if it quacks, we treat it the same Ten million lines of front end, refactor without dread Rename a single symbol, nothing’s left for dead

Java called me kiddo, said the suit looks tight Dad calls me a narc when I flag his code at night But every framework ships me in the box by default The gradual revolution, nobody felt the jolt

Superset, all you are and more (and more) Strict mode on, that’s what the types are for I vanish at runtime, leave it clean Safest chaos the web has seen

Superset, all you are and more (and more) Strict mode on, that’s what the types are for I vanish at runtime, leave it clean Safest chaos the web has seen

So who runs the future when the battle’s all through? There’s a serpent at the door, and it’s asking for you

Last to the mic and I brought the whole crowd Kids and researchers, say it plain, say it loud Readability counts, that’s a verse from my zen Then the models started talking, and the world tuned in

Import the impossible, watch it run first try Twenty lines of morning, shipped by noon, goodbye

Batteries included, come as you are (you are) One clean line beats clever by far Classroom to a cluster, one face The glue of the planet in place Hello, world: still the spell, still the key Every first program finds me

The elder built the metal, I honour the crown Half my speed is his muscle when the numbers come down Java keeps the ledgers, Script lights the screens Sharp runs the studios, Ruby keeps the dream Go lays the pipework, Rust guards the door And I hold the doorway open for a billion more

Legacy’s not a curse word, legacy’s a pulse Still running means you mattered, everything else is false

Batteries included, come as you are (you are) One clean line beats clever by far Classroom to a cluster, one face The glue of the planet in place Hello, world: still the spell, still the key Every first program finds me

So call it a battle, but check the stack trace Every diss in this cypher shares a base and a case We’re one long conversation, forty years of reply The mic never powers down, the loop never dies

Batteries included, come as you are (you are) One clean line beats clever by far Classroom to a cluster, one face The glue of the planet in place Hello, world: still the spell, still the key Every first program finds me

Hello, world, from all of us, signed and compiled with pride The cypher never ends, it just gets multiplied