A song by Steven Levine, to be sung to the tune of I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General from Gilbert and Sullivan's light opera "The Pirates of Penzance". I first met this song in an Amiga random-quotes programme. Its datafile was hashed, so to find all the verses I had to run it many times. Of course that was years ago on a system almost as ancient as the one described as a technological marvel below.

I've built a better model than the one at Data General
For databases vegetable, animal, and mineral
My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality;
My PL/I compiler shows impressive functionality.
My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity,
You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity;
There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting;
My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting.

CHORUS:
His disk drive has capacity for variable formatting,
His disk drive has capacity for variable formatting,
His disk drive has capacity for variable format-formatting.

I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point:
There's lots of space in memory for variables floating-point,
Which shows for input vegetable, animal and mineral
I've built a better model than the one at Data General.

CHORUS:
Which shows for input vegetable, animal and mineral
He's built a better model than the one at Data General.

The IBM new home computer's nothing more than germinal;
At Prime they still have trouble with an interactive terminal;
While Tandy's done a lousy job with operations Boolean,
At Wang the byte capacity's too small to fit a coolie in.
Intel's mid-year finances are something of the trouble sort;
The Timex-Sinclair crashes when you implement a bubble sort.
All DEC investors soon will find they haven't spent their money well;
And need I even mention Nixdorf, Univac or Honeywell?

CHORUS:
And need he even mention Nixdorf, Univac, or Honeywell?
And need he even mention Nixdorf, Univac, or Honeywell?
And need he even mention Nixdorf, Univac, or Honey-Honeywell?

By striving to eliminate all source code that's repetitive
I've brought my benchmark standings to results that are competitive.
In short, for input vegetable, animal and mineral
I've built a better model than the one at Data General.

CHORUS:
Which shows for input vegetable, animal and mineral
He's built a better model than the one at Data General.

In fact when I've a floppy of a minimum diameter,
When I can call a subroutine of infinite parameter,
When I can point to registers and keep their current map around,
And when I can prevent the need for mystifying wraparound,
When I can update record blocks with minimum of suffering,
And when I can afford to use 100K for buffering,
When I've performed a matrix sort and tested the addition rate,
You'll marvel at the speed of my asynchronous transmission rate.

CHORUS:
You'll marvel at the speed of his asynchronous transmission rate.
You'll marvel at the speed of his asynchronous transmission rate.
You'll marvel at the speed of his asynchronous transmission-mission rate.

Though all my better programs that self-reference recursively
Have only been obtained through expert spying, done subversively,
But still for input vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I've built a better model than the one at Data General.

CHORUS:
But still for input vegetable, animal and mineral,
He's built a better model than the one at Data General.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.