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A poem about code and loss of friendship.

I began writing this poem on Oct 23, 2020, and completed it Nov 12, 2020.

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Hello world. It's a pleasure to meet you
I love you, for you are all that I have
You were there for me when I was feeling blue
Indentation, four spaces to a tab

Coding and tweeting are things I enjoy
Suddenly, why do I feel so void?
What I programmed was wrong, I'll wrap it in a try-catch
I thought we were immutable like a const in all caps

I'm not a novice's program. What the hell am I?
I'd hate to lose you, don't delete me please
I'm not a program, I'm human, with a need to cry
Human interaction, you make me feel at ease

Damn, I fucked up, I used an undocumented API
I don't know what this is, I used Function::apply
this instanceof Mistake, Blunder, and Error are all true
I feel like I'm monkey-patching a friendship with glue

I feel like a virus, I break everything I touch
I've only ever caused you problems and struggles
Still, you love and cherish me, you've done so so much
Even made me feel good with kisses and cuddles

I exported all my methods, consts, and even a class
One of them was a generator function
I'd never would've guessed they'd ditch me this fast
I'm so sorry, I can't bear this compunction

What I did was fucked up, but I don't think all is lost
Why might they think I'm a black hat?
You and few understood, the situation is as fragile as frost
I've lost all my friends, even the black cat

Oh garbage collector, please save me, console me
A temp var in block scope, how sad, how lonely
I'm an unused method, callback one last time
Like undefined behavior, I know I'm out of line

Please, please, GC, don't discard my memory
Free, free, release all but that region of me
Unload, clear your mind, spare some space
Alone and so sorry, but I know my place

Unhandled promise rejections are deprecated.
In the future, rejections will terminate the process.
My problems, they're like CSS: cascaded
Should've called .preventDefault(), now I'm reaping the losses

Intimate, down to the metal. Code committed, forked, and merged
You make me tremble, make me glitch. You make my voltage surge
You've rewired me, reprogrammed me, hacked me
Playing with firewall. Can't connect, error code 403

Sexy software sitting on silicon
Yuki, Haruka, Rin; they're all works of fiction
This whole situation is so dumb and so stupid
But you, somehow, you make me feel human

So taboo, so difficult to say aloud
Those events could be described in Markdown or HTML
It's ugly, I was shy to say it in front of a crowd
But I'll let everyone know if it means I won't have to say farewell

I'm sorry, I don't know what else to do, except await
Event listeners could've stopped it, it wasn't fate
Can we all heal? Probably not, only time will tell
This feels exactly like callback hell

Hello world, not a novice's program: A “hello world” program is a basic program that prints something to the screen. It is typically the first program someone learns to write, used as an introduction to a programming language.
try-catch: A region of code where an error could happen, along with a way to recover from that error if it does occur
immutable: In programming, an object is immutable if its properties cannot change. Here, I mean immutable with the sense of unwavering.
const in all caps, consts: A constant, a variable that cannot be reassigned.

In JavaScript, consts are typically written in all caps, such as in Math.PI and Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER, “pi” and “max safe integer” are capitalized.
undocumented API: An API is a way to talk to or delegate work to other pieces of code that you don't own or control. Using an API without reading its documentation is like building IKEA furniture without reading the instructions.
this: A keyword in most programming languages, works like a pronoun, just like “this” or “it” in English.
Function::apply: Apply is a method on functions, it invokes that function with a custom this value.
this instanceof Mistake...: The instanceof keyword asks whether the left falls into the category of the right.

For example, the statement myCar instanceof Corolla asks “Is myCar a Corolla?” This statement evaluates to true or false, which are booleans equivalent to yes and no.
monkey-patching: Repairing or patching code in a sloppy manner, usually without changing the original source.
method: A function is a procedure or set of instructions that can be executed on demand, along with parameters, like alert('Hello world') in JavaScript. A method is a function that is a member of an object, like Math.sin() is a member of Math.
class: A template for creating objects. An object is to a class like a cookie is to a cookie cutter.
generator function: A special kind of function that can pause, yield, and continue its execution.
black hat: A malicious hacker, the household definition of hacker. Someone who hacks for evil or personal gain.
even the black cat: Reference to a cat I loved very much: Goji. The first time we met, I fed him a stick of goo, he loved that shit. One time, I played Tic-Tac-Toe against him, it was surprisingly fun. I wish Goji could read this poem.
garbage collector, GC: A piece of software that's in charge of releasing memory that isn't being used anymore.

If memory were a whiteboard, and you’re filling it up quickly, the garbage collector is like an eraser that clears only the parts we’re not using anymore so we can reuse that space.
temp var in block scope: A throwaway variable with a short-lived, closeted, and lonely lifespan.

Variables in JavaScript can live in certain areas, called scopes. From widest range to smallest range, there's the global and local scopes. In local scope, there’s two more smaller scopes, function and block scope. The block scope is the narrowest scope.
callback (verb): Here, the word takes on the sense of “to inform, notify, or keep up to date.”

A callback (noun, more common) is a small function that's passed into another larger function. Then, that larger function invokes the callback to notify it of the completion of some task.
undefined behavior: Breaking the rules of the programming language, such as by dividing by zero, causing an overflow, indexing an array out of bounds, etc. Usually abbreviated as UB.

Unhandled promise rejections...: A reference to a common error in Node.js, caused by throwing an error in a Promise and not catching it. The full warning reads like this:

DeprecationWarning: Unhandled promise rejections are deprecated. In the future, promise rejections that are not handled will terminate the Node.js process with a non-zero exit code.

like CSS: cascaded: CSS is a styling language, stands for Cascading Style Sheets. Here, cascaded assumes the meaning of “falling rapidly in large amounts”
Should've called .preventDefault(), event listeners could've stopped it: Event listeners are callbacks that are triggered when an event fires (happens). The callback is passed an Event, which has a preventDefault method that allows it to be cancelled.
Code committed, forked, and merged: A reference to version control.

At a large codebase, you have to check out (as in “borrow from a library”) the code you want to edit. This means creating a fork or forking the state of the repository at that time. After creating a few changes, you add a description of what changes you made and commit them. Eventually, these small changes grow to something big, like an app's new feature. Once you're finished with your edits, you merge them all at once back onto the the main branch.
error code 403: The HTTP status code for Forbidden.
Yuki, Haruka, Rin: Software I've made named after anime characters. Yuki was supposed to be a generic parser, but unfortunately never completed. Haruka and Rin are Discord bots, written in CoffeeScript and TypeScript respectively.
Markdown or HTML: Sometimes writing words is easier than saying them. Markdown and HTML are markup languages, languages used to display text. That letter was written in Markdown, and this poem is written in HTML.
await: This JavaScript keyword allows an async function to pause execution until the following promise settles. Here, I mean await in the sense of “this is out of my hands, I can't offer anything except patience.”
callback hell: JavaScript code characterized by many callbacks, resembling a pyramid, leading to loss of control. This website explains it more technically.