This could be integrated in to an SDK - Superstitious Developer Kit. Other tools in the chain could check for things like Friday the 13th, the occurrence of three consecutive sixes in your IP address, and tell you which oils to vaporise, incense to burn, crystals to wear, homoeopathic prophylactics to take, whether it's okay to build or deploy if you, your mother, or sister(s) are menstruating, and so on and so forth.

The same author also wrote: ArnoldC - Programming language based on the one-liners of Arnold Schwarzenegger:

  IT'S SHOWTIME
  TALK TO THE HAND "hello world"
  YOU HAVE BEEN TERMINATED

https://github.com/lhartikk/ArnoldC

Am I correct that it only tests for conjunction with an orb of 1 degree? There are many aspects, some positive and some negative. Planets are also considered to align when they stand up to 8 degree apart.

An improved version would for example deploy when there is a triangle or conjunction, but fail on an opposition or square.

But as any astrologer will tell you, planned dates are meaningless. So yes, why indeed?

Haha..

This should be a boon to religious Hindu coders (if there are any). LOL - Based on Brihaspati' proximity to Mangal's orbit (I have no idea what I am saying) you could choose to not release to minimize your bad luck. I love this - and you actually have a use case. You should shop this around as an app to the big Indian outsourcing firms. All the best!

I had look at source code, it seems like very inaccurate approximation, real planet position could be a few degrees different.

You can get 10' accuracy with a few kilobytes of polynomials. Some astronomical (and astrological) programs use polynomials a few megabytes big. JPL ephems are 1 to 100 gigabytes.

One of the first startups I was involved in was founded by a guy that refused to sign contracts if the stars were not "favourable". Unsurprisingly the company eventually failed.

To be fair, the messages this produces make more sense as part of a build that some I've seen.

I'm afraid to ask about the use case ;)

This should be taken in consideration when setting deadlines : at least 3 months without deployment when Uranus and Neptune are aligned.

Reminds me of this story: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/phase-of-the-moon.html

My mum would be all over this(if she was a programmer) :P

She will avoid buying expensive things or travelling when the planets are not aligned, it's supposed to be bad luck - silly astrology.

The moon is missing. Let me know when you figure that one out.

  % pom
  The Moon is Waning Crescent (20% of Full)
  % man pom
  POM(6)                       FreeBSD Games Manual                       POM(6)
  
  NAME
       pom — display the phase of the moon
  
  SYNOPSIS
       pom [-p] [-d yyyy.mm.dd] [-t hh:mm:ss]
  
  DESCRIPTION
       The pom utility displays the current phase of the moon.  Useful for
       selecting software completion target dates and predicting managerial
       behavior.
  
       Use the -p option to print just the phase as a percentage.
  
       Use the arguments -d and -t to specify a specific date and time for which
       the phase of the moon has to be calculated.  If -d but not -t has been
       specified, it will calculate the phase of the moon on that day at mid‐
       night.
  
  SEE ALSO
       `Practical Astronomy with Your Calculator' by Duffett-Smith.
  
  FreeBSD 10.1                     July 14, 2010                    FreeBSD 10.1

Very nerdy, very awesome.

The biggest question: WHY???

Now, the question: why?