from the depths of my mind, they flutter free

the programmer's bane

I am the programmer's bane.

I am half comma and half colon,
I am the humble semicolon.
The hide-and-seek champion
according to my victims.

My presence, they should not neglect
lest the compilers reject
all the work they have been slaving over.

Such is the misery of the programmer.

These coders make me wheeze and cry
tears of laughter as their bloodshot eyes
scan endless lines of code
to seek the root of problems that arose.

I'll give you a hint:
I'm part of it.
Or rather, my absence is.

Have you got the gist?

When my programmers do, they bang their fists
and I am sent into hysterics
for a little semicolon like me was all they missed.

After they put a clone of me
I am filled with glee
the moment they see
they are not yet free
for more errors have come to be.

Then they cause another racket
when they realize a missing bracket
caused the failure of their project.

Ah, of course, the other prime suspect.

And people wonder why programmers burn with fury
when they claim that coding is easy.

These amateurs do not know
what great lengths coders have to go
to produce a program that compiles and runs
as expected until the job is done.

Isn't programming fun?

I am not the only one laughing.

Python is there in the corner, watching
and cackling
and muttering,
"I pity those who deal with such things."

I am the programmer's bane.
Semicolon is my name,
and for many programming errors, I am to blame.