About the Author

All the world is paged,

And all the men and women merely programs:

They have their exits and their segfaults;

And one man in his time plays many games,

His acts being seven ages. At first, the newbie,

Mewling and puking in BASIC terms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his packages,

And JavaServer Faces, creeping like snail

Downloading from the Web. And then the l0v3r,

Sighing like heat sink fan, with an unmerged commit

Made to his github project. Then a hacker,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like a guru,

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the flamebait reputation

Even on lkml. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with cappuccino drowned,

With eyes severe and beard of two days’ cut,

Full of wise saws and modern design patterns;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and sandal’d pantaloon,

With bifocals on nose and balding pate,

His COBOL code, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big noisy voice,

Turning again toward childish errors, buffer

Overruns in his code. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans mouse, sans keyboard, sans debugger, sans everything.

By William Shakespeare, edited by Ray Lischner

Ray Lischner started writing programs before he had access to a computer, and over the subsequent three decades, he progressed steadily through the ages of programming. He currently lives with his wife, children, and four-terabyte MythTV server in Maryland, where he does his best to retard the inexorable descent into the seventh age.