PL Poetry

By Steve Jackson,
With apologies to Robert Frost.

Two paths diverged in a CFG,
and sorry I could not follow both
and be one analysis, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it iterated a tree;

Then took the other, which traversed lists,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it seemed buggy, the code amiss;
Though as for that the analysis
Treated them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In blocks not yet in local cache.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how path searches delay,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
At a conference, ages hence:
Two paths diverged in a graph, and I–
I took the one less followed by,
And that has made all the difference.

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