It's the holiday season, which means over the next few days, we'll be reviewing some of the best of 2020, if anything about 2020 can be considered "the best", and maybe some other surprises. To kick things off, we're going to pull from the faroff year of Christmas 2017, and return to our Developer Carols. That year, we ran them too late to go caroling, and this year, nobody outside of New Zealand should be going caroling, keeping with our tradition of meeting the requirements but delivering absolutely no value. (Original)
Árbol navideño luminoso en Madrid 02

It’s Christmas, and thus technically too late to actually go caroling. Like any good project, we’ve delivered close enough to the deadline to claim success, but late enough to actually be useless for this year!

Still, enjoy some holiday carols specifically written for our IT employees. Feel free to annoy your friends and family for the rest of the day.

Push to Prod (to the tune of Joy To the World)

Joy to the world,
We’ve pushed to prod,
Let all,
record complaints,
“This isn’t what we asked you for,”
“Who signed off on these requirements,”
“Rework it,” PMs sing,
“Rework it,” PMs sing,
“Work over break,” the PMs sing.


Backups (to the tune of Deck the Halls)

Back the system up to tape drives,
Fa la la la la la la la la,
TAR will make the tape archives,
Fa la la la la la la la la,
Recov'ry don't need no testing,
Fa la la la la la la la la la,
Pray it works upon requesting,
Fa la la la la la la la la


Ode to CSS (to the tune of Silent Night)

Vertical height,
Align to the right,
CSS,
Aid my fight,
Round the corners,
Flattened design,
!important,
Please work this time,
It won't work in IE,
Never in goddamn IE


The Twelve Days of The Holiday Shift (to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas)

On my nth day of helpdesk, the ticket sent to me:
12 write arms leaping
11 Trojans dancing
10 bosses griping
9 fans not humming
8 RAIDs not striping
7 WANs a-failing
6 cables fraying
5 broken things
4 calling users
3 missing pens
2 turtled drives
and a toner cartridge that is empty.

(Contributed by Charles Robinson)


Here Comes a Crash Bug (to the tune of Here Comes Santa Claus)

Here comes a crash bug,
Here comes a crash bug,
Find th’ culprit with git blame,
Oh it was my fault,
It’s always my fault,
Patch and push again.

Issues raisin‘, users ‘plainin’,
Builds are failin’ tonight,
So hang your head and say your prayers,
For a crash bug comes tonight.


WCry the Malware (to the tune of Frosty the Snowman)

WCry the Malware, was a nasty ugly worm,
With a cryptolock and a bitcoin bribe,
Spread over SMB

WCry the Malware, is a Korean hack they say,
But the NSA covered up the vuln,
To use on us one day

There must have been some magic in that old kill-switch they found,
For when they register’d a domain,
The hack gained no more ground

WCry the Malware, was as alive as he could be,
Till Microsoft released a patch,
To fix up SMB

(Suggested by Mark Bowytz)


Oh Come All Ye Web Devs (to the tune of Oh Come All Ye Faithful)

Oh come, all ye web devs,
Joyful and triumphant,
Oh come ye to witness,
JavaScript's heir:

Come behold TypeScript,
It’s just JavaScript,
But we can conceal that,
But we can conceal that,
But we can conceal that,
With our toolchain


Thanks to Jane Bailey for help with scansion. Where it's right, thank her, where it's wrong, blame me.

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