From BBS to Blockchain: A Boat Gig Parody for Old-School Nerds
| 3 minutes read
Last weekend, I was coding when a song from one of my Apple Music playlists started playing: Boat Gig by the band Tribal Tech (highly recommended if you’re not familiar with it).
As the music played and I continued coding and learning to work with AI, a sort of movie ran through my mind—reflecting on where we’ve come from (at least since I hopped on the boat) in the tech world, and where we are today.
That’s how I ended up writing a fun parody—or at least that was my intention—of Boat Gig, inspired by my nerdy world.
The lyrics are below. For those interested, here’s a link to the original song on YouTube.
I’ve been programming code for 30 years,
- From BASIC to Python, I’ve fought all the gears.
Started out on a BBS, dialing up slow,
SysOps running boards where all the geeks would go.
Then came CompuServe, where the big shots played,
Paying per hour, yeah, but we all stayed.
AOL came next with its shiny CDs,
“Welcome! You’ve got mail!” still haunts my dreams.
NutecNet was the portal, oh, what a sight,
Brazilian dial-up warriors surfing late at night.
(chorus)
Code gig, yeah, it’s my kind of grind,
Building worlds in the matrix, leaving lag behind.
Got my Linux box running, like a hacker’s delight,
- From the days of floppy disks to the blockchain fight.
1994, man, the internet was wild,
Geocities gave every nerd their own style.
Frames and marquees, glitter text that blinked,
JavaScript pop-ups that made your browser sink.
Hanging out on BBS boards all day,
ASCII art and text games leading the way.
CompuServe forums for the elite tech talk,
Sharing code snippets while we watched the clock.
Downloading shareware that took all night,
Praying no one picked up the phone mid-byte!
Remember when CompuServe felt like the future?
ASCII art was Mona Lisa for the computer.
BBS was the hangout, where nerds got their start,
Text-based adventures? Now that was art!
Blockchain came along and rewrote the game,
Proof-of-Work, baby, trustless and insane.
Mining crypto at night, dodging FOMO and scams,
Watching AI grow smarter with its neural-net plans.
Now it’s deep learning, GPTs on the rise,
AI writes code while I supervise.
But I’m still in control, yeah, don’t get it wrong,
Even AI can’t mess with my code gig song.
(chorus)
Code gig, yeah, it’s my kind of grind,
Building worlds in the matrix, leaving lag behind.
Got my Linux box running, like a hacker’s delight,
- From the days of floppy disks to the blockchain fight.
Code gig, yeah, it’s my lifelong quest,
- From BBS to CompuServe, I gave it my best.
NutecNet days, man, I surfed through the lag,
Now AI and Monero are the flags in my bag.
I hope you liked it. :D