Vesta-1 songs

The first implementation of the Vesta ideas, a system we now call Vesta-1, was put into service at the DEC Systems Research Center back in 1990, as part of a large porting project called Project 90. Neither Vesta nor the rest of the Project 90 tools were ready for prime time when we started using them. The bugs and performance problems inspired some creative humor from folks trying to save their sanity. Vesta-1 and Project 90 are ancient history now, but some of the lines are still funny.

Welcome to the Vesta Repository
Words: Lance Berc & Tim Mann
Music: "Hotel California", The Eagles
capo 3, start note A
Alternative lyrics: "It's a lovely place / With a slower pace." 

Bm  Hacking on Project 90,
F#  Giving in to despair,
A   Sweet smell of cold pizza
E   Rising up through the air.
 
G   Had my code almost working;
D   It'd been a long fight.
Em  My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim--
F#  I had to stop for the night.
 
Bm  My hands slipped on the keyboard.
F#  I couldn't think so well.
A   I was talking to myself,
E   And when I tried to stand, I fell.

G   So I checked in my model,
D   But I got something wrong.
Em  And from the voicebox on my Firefly,
F#  I thought I heard this song...

 CHORUS
G                           D
 Welcome to the Vesta repository.
        F#
 It's a lovely place
        Bm
 For an interface.
         G                                 D
 There's plenty of room in the Vesta repository.
            Em
 Check your source in here;
        F#
 Get it back next year.
 
Bm  It's got the release model;
F#  It's got the buildingenv.
A   It's got all of the interfaces
E   That we call "Friends."

G   It's got my bogus versions,
D   Though they're all wet.
Em  It always remembers
F#  What I want to forget.

Bm  So I called for an object
F#  That was once working fine.
A   It said, "We must have weeded that derived
E   Back in version 29."

G   And still my voicebox was calling
D   From far away.
Em  When I turned up the volume control,
F#  I thought I heard it say...  

 CHORUS

Bm  Programs in the attic;
F#  Old deriveds on ice.
A   They are all just prisoners here,
E   On a disk device.
 
G   Last night in Garret's office,
D   A vmake was unleashed.
Em  We stabbed it with our control-Cs,
F#  But we could not kill the beast.

Bm  And I somehow broke my program;
F#  It was always dumping core.
A   I had to find the pathname 
E   For the source that worked before.
 
G   "Relax," said the Vestans, 
D   "We are programmed to receive.
Em  You can check in anything you like,
F#  And it will never leave."
 
 CHORUS (or guitar solo)


Weed Gone Awry
Words: Lance Berc and Tim Mann
Music: Three Blind Mice

Weed gone awry!
Weed gone awry!
See what it's done!
See what it's done!

It went and deleted some old deriveds
It thought they'd come to the end of their lives,
But they were needed for SRC to survive.

Weed gone awry!
Weed gone awry!


Evaluation Anticipation
Words: Tim Mann
Music: "Anticipation", Carly Simon

We can never know about compiles to come,
But we think about them anyway.
And I wonder if Vesta's really with me now,
Or still looking for what was weeded yesterday.

CHORUS
Evaluation anticipation 
Is making me late,
Is keeping me wa-a-a-a-a-aiting.

Now they tell me how easy it is to work with you,
How UseVesta will write all my models for me.
But I, I revised my imports late last night,
And now I think that it wants to compile the whole world for me.

CHORUS

And tomorrow, my build might have completed.
I'm no prophet---I don't know Vesta's ways
So I'll try saying "vmake" and going home right now.

But when Vulcan gets here, we'll say
These were the good old days
These were the good old days
These were the good old days.

When Vulcan gets here, we'll say
These were the good old days.


Help!
Words: Dave Redell
Music: The Beatles

Help -- I need a version
Help -- not just any version
Help -- you know I need those bits
HHELLLLPP !

When I was younger, so much younger than today
I started an evaluation, and it lost its way
And now it's standing still and sending back the word
Of recipe evaluation -- man this is absurd

CHORUS:
Help me if you can -- it's slowing down
And it never even quite got off the ground 
Maybe my old Makefile's still around
Won't you please, please help me?

When I first pushed Eval, I thought I had contrived
To write a model that would give me a derived.
But now at last I see why it will never work:
A comma for a semicolon -- gee, I'm such a jerk!

CHORUS

Glossary/explanation of some of the contents of the above:

Firefly

a multiprocessor workstation.

voicebox

the Firefly's sound output device.

buildingenv

Vesta-1 name for the standard environment.

Friends

In SRC's early-90's programming style, semi-private interfaces to libraries had names with the word Friends in them.

Weed Gone Awry

This one was inspired by the subject line of a message that Roy sent out, apologizing for an errant weed that was keeping people from doing work until the Vesta team got the cache patched up.

UseVesta

The Vesta-1 GUI.

Vulcan

A research Modula-2+ compiler that was put into service in Project 90 a few months later than Vesta was.

recipe evaluation

A Vesta-1 idea that turned out to be bad. It was very slow, and when the evaluator invoked it, this was generally a sign that you were in deep doodoo.

pushed Eval

Ran the evaluator from the UseVesta GUI.

comma for a semicolon

This was a common user error in the Vesta-1 modeling language that produced confusing results. Comma and semicolon had subtly different effects on scoping. When Tim was still a Vesta-1 user (as opposed to a developer), he once gave a short talk on spotting common errors in your models. Two of the slides had nothing on them but a giant comma and a giant semicolon. This problem (and many others) were elimianted when the language was redesigned for Vesta-2.

At one point there was a bug where ^C sometimes would not kill a vmake.