GEN A SYS
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  In the beginning, there was chaos and the Universe was without form
and void.  The Lord looked upon His domain and decided to declare His
presence.  "I be" He said, and then corrected His grammer and added "am".

  If the Lord had decided to work on irregular verb conjugation first
this wouldn't have happened.  God would later curse the English
language for its part, but in that moment I.B.M. came into being.

  The Lord looked out upon I.B.M. He had created and said "This is
good".  That's what He said, but He shook His head, wondered what the
User Group would say, split the light from the dark and went to bed.
Thus passed the beginning and the end of the first day.

  On the second day, the Lord summoned I.B.M. upon His presence.
"There is chaos out there, and the Universe is without form and void,
I must correct this and I can use your help.  Is there anything you
can do for me?"

  "I can take care of form." I.B.M. replied. "Put me in charge of
computers and I will take care of form for you."

  The Lord thought this was good and said "Let there be computers. Let
I.B.M. have my powers of creation that pertain to computers and form."
Thus saying, the Lord went off to his second day's work while I.B.M
created the 1401.

  On the third day, while the Lord was out, I.B.M. decided to
subdivide the assigend task.  "Let there be systems that make the
computer work and let them be called Operating Systems.  Let there
also be systems that make use of the computer and let them be called
Application Systems."  Thus, there came into being both Operating
Systems and Application Systems, but there were no programmers.

  The next morning I.B.M. had to give the Lord a status report.
  "What did you do yesterday?" the Lord asked.
  "I invented the operating systems" I.B.M. replied.
  "You did?" the Lord shuddered.  "Oh dear."
  "Yes I did," I.B.M. confirmed, "but I need something you alone can
   provide."
  "And what is that?"
  "I need programmers to use my computers, to operate my applications."
  "That can't be done now," said the Lord.  "This is only the fourth
   day and there won't be people until the sixth day."
  "I need programmers and I need them now.  If they can't be people
   they can't be people, but we have to work this out today."
  "Give me some specifications and I'll se what I can do." 

I.B.M. hastily worked up specs for programmers (are specs ever anything
other than hasty?) and the Lord reviewed them.

  The Lord knew the specs weren't sufficient but followed them anyway.
He also made some programmers that did just what programmers were
supposed to do, just to spite I.B.M.  The programmers and I.B.M. spent
the rest of the day creating Assembler and Fortran.

  On the morning of the fifth day, I.B.M. reported to The Lord once
again.

  "The programmers you created for me have a problem.  They want a
programming language that is easy to use and similar to English. I
told them you had cursed English, though I still don't know why. They
wanted me to ask you indulgence on this."

  The Lord had cursed English for a good reason, but didn't want to
explain this to I.B.M.  He said "Let there be Cobol" and that was
that.

  On the status report of the next day I.B.M. announced that computers
had cone forth and multiplied.  Unfortunately, the computers still
weren't big enough and fast enough to do what the programmers wanted.
The Lord liked the idea of going forth and multiplying, and used the
line Himself later on that day.  This sixth day being paricularly
busy, He declard "Let there be MVS" and there was MVS.

  On the seventh day God had finished creation and computers had Cobol
and MVS.  The Lord and I.B.M. took the day off to go fishing.  I.B.M.
hung a sign on the door to help programmers in his absence.

  IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY AGAIN - AND HAVE THE FOLLOWING
READY BEFORE CALLING I.B.M. ...

  This was the start, and by some accounts the end, of I.B.M.
documentation. 

  On the start of the second week the programmers went over I.B.M.'s
CRT directly to God.

  "We have a horrible problem" they complained.  "Our users want
systems that perform according to their expectations."

  "Users!" the Lord bellowed.  "Who said you should have users!  Users
are the difference between good and bad applications, a function I
have reserved unto myself!  Who authorized you to have users?"

  "Well, I.B.M. ..."
  "I.B.M.!  You!  You did this to my programmers!  You gave them
knowledge of of good and evil.  For that you shall suffer through
eternity!

  "Let there be competition.  Let it be called Anacom, and Burroughs,
and C.D.C."

  The Lord went through the alphabet several times.  "With all this
competition you shall suffer the pain of antitrust legislation all the
days of your existence."

  This was the start of the second week, and it seems an appropriate
place to conclude this report.  In case you missed something, a
summary of key points follows.

. Users and their needs are and always have been a subject of dispute.

. Nobody can learn English because it is cursed by God.

. I.B.M. manuals are doubly cursed and therefore twice as hard to
  understand. 

. Of the programming languages, only Cobol can claim divine origin.

. People are people, but programmers are something else.

. Computers may be a gift from heaven, but there's no divine help in
  getting them work.

. Because of I.B.M.'s initial assignment, there are more forms than
  anyone knows what to do with.

. Finally, chaos was part of the original state of the Universe and
  not a product of the data processing industry.