A Software Wizard’s Tome II

Volume 2: More useful spells for everyday life in the grand game, or not.

Image generated by the author using Stable Diffusion

In a long awaited¹ follow up to the original Software Wizard’s Tome, back in back in September 2022, I have extended the original incantations further with a range of extremely useful, often over cynical, and highly passive aggressive uses for the exasperating quintessence generated by modern workplace².

Alteration

Adhesive Aura

An immensely useful cantrip most often used in the Grand Game of Software Engineering to make the scrum master’s Post-It notes incredibly sticky such that once put in place they are extremely difficult to remove and stick very firmly to any surface they touch.

Useful both to slow down a stand up meeting, to allow time to plan ahead, finish coffee, or just wind down the clock so the meeting automatically times out or just for the comedy value of the scrum droid trying to peel practically unremovable coloured bits of paper from their fingertips, coffee mug, or forehead. Use your imagination.

The spell, fortunately, is quickly cast by pointing a tube of (sealed) superglue in the general direction of the objects in question whilst holding a Post-It note in the other hand inscribed with the words “Viscum Adhereere”.

A critical fail, however, has dire consequences in that it causes the inscribed Post-It to adhere extremely firmly to your own hand so that it cannot be removed for 4d6 hours before spontaneously bursting into flames.

Make sure you’re standing near a bucket of water for this terribly eventuality.

Recursive Ruckus

An evil spell, originally crafted by a functional programmer being forced to work on insurance software against their will for several very long feeling months, that replaces all iterative constructs within a targeted source file with equivalent recursive ones.

Originally designed to obscure the arcane constructs of the functional mind but latterly adapted into general use as larger machine memory became more widely available, the spell is a double edged sword and must be cast extremely carefully.