Tell Me What You Owe
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
Red light on the runner, and it won't say why
Red light on the runner, and it won't say why
Just "expected success" and a big old lie
I pushed a guess on Monday, pushed another on the stand
Each one cost me an hour and a payment on the land
Make that failure tell me what you owe, Lord, tell me what you owe
Got to read the body, baby, before I let it go
Don't you fix it blind, no, don't you fix it blind
Let the trouble sing its name and then I'll ease my mind
Windows said it's fine, but Linux called my bluff
Windows said it's fine, but Linux called my bluff
Status code's a knock, brother, that ain't near enough
I opened up the body, found a small and sorry thing
A missing little file that I'd forgot to bring
Make that failure tell me what you owe, Lord, tell me what you owe
Got to read the body, baby, before I let it go
Don't you fix it blind, no, don't you fix it blind
Let the trouble sing its name and then I'll ease my mind
Three small payments, only one cleared the line
But the first two bought the light, and the light was mine
Keep the secrets out the log, keep the debt in view
Whoever finds this next time, it's a gift from you
Make that failure tell me what you owe, Lord, tell me what you owe
Horns!
Don't you fix it blind, no, don't you fix it blind
Let the trouble sing its name and then I'll ease my mind
A test that only says no is half a note
Tell me what you owe, tell me what you owe
The band
The Technical Debt Collectors
A gravelly, swaggering voice calling out over a band that struts. Twelve-bar phrasing with a repeated opening line, and a lyric that is all debt, interest, collection and somebody eventually paying.
None of these bands are real. Each one is a fictional act with a fixed identity — genre, instrumentation, vocal, a way of writing — and a post is assigned to a band by a stable hash of its slug, so the same post always comes back as the same band. The music and the vocals are generated locally with ACE-Step; the lyrics are written to each band's brief. No musicians, no recordings, no one to credit.
Where the words came from
The lyrics were written from the post A Failing Test Should Explain Itself.
When a test fails somewhere you can't easily reproduce, the first fix should be making the failure tell you why, not guessing at the cause.