Sometimes you get an idea that you just have to dig into just a little bit deeper… I made an off-handed comment earlier today to Ian Barker (as usual) and later thought about it more and figured that I would spend a bit more time on it tonight.
The concept involves The Rocky Horror Picture Show which is an American cult-classic musical comedy film. I remember first seeing it in the mid-1980’s at the midnight show at a local cinema. The movie played as the last show of the weekend as a tradition over the span of quite a few years. It became a fairly popular local event that teenagers and adults of all ages attended.
If you have never seen the movie, you may very well be confused with this post…but those that have seen it may find it more interesting. I went with a buddy of mine and we brought a loaf of toasted bread, a water spray bottle, an umbrella, a deck of playing cards and I believe a few other things that I no longer remember. He asked me to bring some of these items but did not tell me why until the show started. In turns out that there are times in the movie where the props are utilized…for example, there is a line in the movie when the actor proposes a toast and when that occurs the crowd launched their pieces of toast all across the theater. When the rain comes down, you would use your spray bottle at the people sitting around you and use your umbrella to protect yourself if you had one. The place was a madhouse and seemed utterly destroyed by the end of the movie. I remember walking out thinking about how much effort it would take to clean the place afterwards.
The movie is stupendously stupid, but the music was well produced and quite popular over the years. One of the most popular songs was “Time Warp” and the main lyric is “Let’s Do The Time Warp Again” which is often repeated in the song. It definitely is an ‘ear-worm’ and somehow stays with you.
I said all of that to sing this replacement lyric: “Let’s Do The Rewrite Again” as an ode to the sad comedy that often happens to many software applications, especially those built with Delphi. Delphi is so powerful that many applications have been produced over the years that perfectly fills an exact need and new managers arrive and immediately try to rewrite the app using the latest framework-of-the-day. Quite often, those rewrites fail and the managers are replaced and the cycle is repeated … to which I sing again: “Let’s Do The Rewrite Again” in my best singing voice.
With the popularity of AI today, I was bound to come up with a full set of lyrics to this song. Before proceeding, I believe you should refresh your memory of, or introduce yourself to, the original “Time Warp” song from the movie. Here is a video on Vimeo where the music starts about 40 seconds in: Rocky Horror Picture Show, Time Warp
I invite you to play the video and sing along to the “Rewrite” song using the lyrics below.
I edited some of the lyrics as a few exactly matched the original. I also added a few lines of my own, but for the most part these are ChatGPT and Bing-AI generated lyrics.
Let’s Do The Rewrite Again
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It's confounding
Cycles repeating
Revisions, take their toll
Now watch closely
As your zoom meetings linger
While I've got to use version control
I remember doing the rewrite
Thinking about those moments when
The new epic would hit me
And the code would be flowing
Let's do the rewrite again
Let's do the rewrite again
It's just a card on the left
That gets moved to the right
With your hands on your keyboard
You bring your code to life
But it's the customer's feedback that really drives you insane
Let's do the rewrite again
Let's do the rewrite again
It's so tricky, oh can't you see
In this cycle, where changes sprawl
In another iteration, with good intention
Well-intended, yet it falls
With a new chief, a fresh belief
A platform shift, a grand motif
But the legacy code, it stands the test
While the new attempt, it fails the quest
Let's do the rewrite again
Let's do the rewrite again
They bring in tools, and change the rules
A rewrite dance, fools in a trance
But the original, it stands the strain
As the new falters, in the endless chain
The cycle spins, as time begins
A managerial song, that plays along
Let's do the rewrite again
Let's do the rewrite again
It's just a card on the left
That gets moved to the right
With your hands on your keyboard
You bring your code to life
But it's the CTO's feedback that really drives you insane
Let's do the rewrite again
Let's do the rewrite again
...insert a big dance number here...
Let's do the rewrite again
Let's do the rewrite again
It's just a card on the left
That gets moved to the right
With your hands on your keyboard
You bring your code to life
But it's the Product Manager's feedback that really drives you insane
Let's do the rewrite again
Let's do the rewrite again
Unfortunately, this rewrite event happens every day in America and across the world. At least there is now a theme song to go along with it.
And, of course, I had to use AI to generate an image for this blog post.
