Turing's sword

[marnanel]

With apologies to Kipling.

See you our server farm that hums
And serves HTTP?
It's spun its disks and done its sums
Ever since Berners-Lee.

See you our mainframe spewing out
The Towers of Hanoi?
It's moved recursive discs about
Since Babbage was a boy.

See you our ZX81
That prints the ABCs?
That very program used to run
With Lovelace at the keys.

Magnetic floppy disks and hard,
And tape with patience torn,
And eighty columns on a card,
And so was England born!

She is not any common thing,
Water or Wood or Air,
But Turing's Isle of Programming,
Where you and I will fare.