Here's a poem I wrote; it's a parody of Kermit the Frog's "It's not easy
being green." - Lee Hart

Ode to Eight Bits

It's not easy using eight
When your friends all use sixteen.
They claim octal is passe,
And is doomed to fade away.
So change now 'fore it's too late.

Folks demand a lot from you
At sixteen, or thirty-two.
They'll expect you to define
The 157th prime
In a millisec or two.

But eight is right for ASCII codes,
Characters and ESCape modes.
I can learn it byte by byte,
No segment registers in sight,
Or distressing address modes.

Eight counts the fingers I can see
And that suits me perfectly.
For programming that I do,
With the old 1802,
Eight's just right for me.

Published in "PyroTechnics" issue #49, December, 1991, edited by Bill Higgins & Barry Gehm.
Recently posted in cosmacelf Yahoo! group by author, Oct 2009