If...

Merrion

with considerable apology to Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your specs when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust source safe when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their OS/2;
If you can wait and not time out while waiting;
Or coding I/O ports, don't deal in files,
Or, being hacked, don't give way to hacking;
And yet don't look too GUI'd, nor appletalk too wise;

If you can stream—and not make streams your master;
If you can link—and not make binaries your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two bit registers just the same;
If you can bear to hear the logic you've coded
Twisted by managers to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the pointers you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with outdated tools;

If you can make one heap of all your learning
And risk it on one backup writ on DOS,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your chars, keywords and symbols
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can interface with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or heapwalk with strings--nor lose the common touch;
If neither virus nor email hoax can hurt you;
If all bounds count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty clock ticks worth of application run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a nerd, my son!