You have new mail.
% finger qarl@ecl.wustl.edu

Login: qarl Name: Karl Stiefvater
Directory: /home/qarl Shell: /bin/tcsh
Plan:

Ode to the Forgotten Dotfiles

In the terminal’s quiet cathedral, dim-lit,
Where prompts blink soft like candlelit wit,
Once lived the files, the sacred, the terse —
A .plan, a .forward, the UNIXverse.

.login would whisper, .cshrc would sing,
Each shell a cathedral, each alias a ring
Of command-line incantation, crisp and exact —
No icons, no windows, no mouse to distract.

Your .plan held secrets, your .forward your fate,
Mail from the void, arriving sedate.
Talk’d and wall’d, the net spirits did roam,
Every terminal sacred, each TTY home.

Now Slack has devoured the old write command,
And .signature files are no longer planned.
We cd through nostalgia, grep through regret,
For fingered truths the net forgot to forget.

But still in the silence, the prompt softly glows,
Like phosphor on glass, where old wisdom grows.
So here’s to the keepers, who still know the way —
The monks of the shell, who vi their day.

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Filed under: AI - @ 20 May 2025 6:33 am