The Signs of Soundness

The Signs of Soundness

Hello scala, my old friend
I've come to take you home again
Because a feature slowly creeping
left me plagued with doubts and weeping
and the version that was tagged in the repo
just has to go
it lacks the signs of soundness

On sleepless nights I hacked alone
applying ant and other tools of stone
A futile tour of every open bug
once done in weeks, now I can only shrug
when my brain was melted by a blast of complexity
which needn't be
I lost all signs of soundness

And in the bug tracker I saw
ten thousand tickets, maybe more
Abstract types, improper variance
Skolems escaping through a porous fence
People writing type lambdas which no one understands
and no one planned
to check for signs of soundness

"Friends," said I, "You do not know
Unsoundness like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my code that I might reach you"
But in unpublished branches it lay
still does today
awaiting signs of soundness

To scalac they'd plead and pray
it had to get faster some day
Yet scala's future it has itself seen
Warnings unheeded thanks to SIP-18
And the log says
"The words of the prophets were written in old tickets
and closed wontfix"
We search for signs of soundness