nesbitt.io
Madame Semver Will See You Now
The tent is at the back of the fairground, past the fudge stall. The velvet over the entrance is the exact red of a failed CI badge.
Madame Semver is already shuffling when you sit. She does not ask your question. She turns the first card and it says `^1.0.0`, just that, black ink on cream.
“The caret. It permits everything that comes after, and you put it there yourself, which is the part people forget.” She sets it down. “You came here to ask if you should archive the repository. You will not. We both know you will not. So let me tell you what happens instead.”
## 🃏
She turns three cards in a row and barely glances at them.
“In June you receive a pull request. It is polite. It has tests. The tests pass. The code is wrong in a way that costs you most of a Saturday, and at the bottom of the description there is a co-author you cannot find a photograph of. You will merge two more from him before you learn to check.”
“In August a stranger opens an issue explaining what your library does. He is mistaken but very sure, and cites a source you cannot argue with. The next week somebody else publishes the package he was describing, under a name one letter from yours, and by September it has the downloads.”
She turns the Tower, and of course it is the Tower, the tall thing on the tiny base, Nebraska, 2003. She does not explain it because she knows you have it on a mug.
“There is a scan in October. The report is long, confident, and formatted beautifully, with severity scores you did not ask for and an executive summary. Eleven of the twelve findings are your own documented behaviour described back to you as flaws. The twelfth is real, which is the only reason you read the other eleven, and the only reason it happens again in November.”
She turns one more and her hand stops over it. A figure at your gate, helpful, carrying tools. “This one stays. He fixes the small things and asks for nothing and answers the questions you are tired of answering. He is patient in a way you will admire and then, later, look up. In the third year he asks for the keys.” She puts the card face down, which she has not done with any of the others.
## 🔮
She pushes the deck aside and pulls the crystal ball forward.
“Further out. Something with a very long memory has read an old version of your README and will go on recommending a function you removed in March, with total conviction, for about two years. You will add the function back. Don’t look at me like that. You will mark it deprecated, and the warning will be reported to you as a bug.”
“There will be a file in your root, all capitals, instructions addressed to no one in particular. It is read more carefully than anything else you have ever written. After a while you find you are writing your other documents in the same voice, and you do not remember deciding to.”
“Something in Virginia fetches your tarball eleven thousand times one Tuesday afternoon. It is not an attack. It is somebody’s enthusiasm, running in a circle, and the circle has your name in it. The same month you hire a servant to close the doors you cannot bring yourself to close, and another servant you did not hire arrives to hold them open, and between the two of them a door will open and shut for a year while you watch.”
She lets go of the ball and the tent is briefly very quiet.
“There is a fork. Not soon. The maintainer is tireless and responsive and merges everything within the hour and you will know exactly what he is the moment you see the avatar. A number of people will prefer him.” She almost smiles. “He pins to you with a caret. It permits everything that comes after.”
The reading has a length, and you have reached it. The board outside lists three tiers, one dollar, five, twenty-five with a small enamel badge. You pay the dollar, which is what everyone pays.
“Come back,” she says, holding the velvet aside, “when the next major version comes for you.” She does not say whose.
