An interesting little bit floated by way via twitter today, via @mikkohypponen by way of a retweet by @mithaler

It all pointed to an entry on wikipedia that discusses a program (IEFBR14) that runs on all IBM mainframes.

The program does absolutely nothing. And according to a story retold in the article, it took a few revisions to get it right.

There is an apocryphal story about the large number of attempts that were required in order to produce a “correct” version of MVS’s null program, IEFBR14 (this was done back in the days when MVS was still called OS). As with all MVS programs, IEFBR14 is called using the standard system calling conventions, and all it has to do is return successfully.

It reads like it was taken straight from a Paranoia game, which is why I’m posting it here. Go read the whole story and judge for yourselves.