Herman Hollerith Poems | Examples

Base Two Blues

I sit here cursing at Herman Hollerith,
and his foolish punch card machine,
trying to make base-2 make sense in a base-10 world.  

Now I can add and subtract as well as any man,
But peeking where I poked is really a hard call, 
much harder than it looks!
Though I've received compliments for my two's-complement notation.
Some people even flipped their bits!

I have fond memories of bytes that flowed, making words into meaningful structure,  
Though I must confess, that iterable data structures often leave me irritable. 
Like objects of my memory, now dereferenced, though fail when strict'd

I also learned a few good pointers, which makes it easier I find,
if you want your look up tables to behave.
But I've also found that, 
it's pointless pointing pointers where you have no address saved.

I never optimize what I have written clearly, 
But I shudder when coded memory has leaked! 
Oh no, t'was caught too late, 
it's crashed again.