Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal: Difference between revisions

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{{short description|1983 essay about programming}}

#REDIRECT [[Real programmer]]

"'''Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal'''"<ref name=ryerson>{{cite web

|url = http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html

|title = Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal

|author = Post, Ed

|date = July 1983

|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20120206010243/http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html

|archivedate = 2012-02-06

|url-status = live

}}</ref> (a parody of the bestselling 1982 tongue-in-cheek book on stereotypes about masculinity ''[[Real Men Don't Eat Quiche]]'') is an essay about [[computer programming]] written by Ed Post of [[Tektronix, Inc.]],<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=_S4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA34 ''Note:'' Graphic Software Systems was a 1981 spin-off of Tektronix]</ref> and published in July 1983 as a reader's contribution in ''[[Datamation]]''.<ref group="lower-alpha">Volume 29 number 7</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_datamation_52582203/page/n245/mode/2up |title=Datamation |date=July 1983 |publisher=Technical Publishing |volume=29 |___location=United States |pages=263-265 |language=en}}</ref>

==History==

Widely circulated on [[Usenet]] in its day, and well known in the computer software industry,<ref name=Raymond>{{cite web

| url = http://www.th-soft.com/zzJargon/R.htm#Real_Programmer

| title = Real Programmer

| work = The New Hacker's Dictionary

| date = July 27, 1993

| editor = Eric S. Raymond| accessdate = 2008-03-28

}}</ref> the article compares and contrasts ''real programmers'', who use punch cards and write programs in [[FORTRAN]] or [[assembly language]], with modern-day "quiche eaters" who use programming languages such as [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]] which support [[structured programming]] and impose restrictions meant to prevent or minimize common [[software bug|bug]]s due to inadvertent programming logic errors. Also mentioned are feats such as [[Seymour Cray]], the inventor of the [[Cray-1]] supercomputer, using manual control switches to load the first operating system for the [[CDC 7600]] without notes.

The next year [[Ed Nather]]’s ''[[The Story of Mel]]'', also known as ''The realest programmer of all'', extended the theme. Immortalized in the piece is Mel Kaye of the [[Royal McBee]] Computer Corporation. As the story famously puts it, "He wrote in machine code—in 'raw, unadorned, inscrutable [[hexadecimal]] numbers. Directly.'"

Since then, the [[computer jargon|computer folklore]] term ''Real Programmer'' has come to describe the archetypical "hardcore" programmer who eschews the modern languages and tools of the day in favour of more direct and efficient (for the machine, decidedly not for the programmer) solutions—[[low-level programming language|closer to the hardware]].<ref name=Raymond/> The term is used in many subsequent articles,<ref>{{cite journal

| url = http://csdl2.computer.org/persagen/DLAbsToc.jsp?resourcePath=/dl/mags/so/&toc=comp/mags/so/1995/06/s6toc.xml&DOI=10.1109/52.469755

| author = Ian Gorton

| title = Real Programmers Do Use Delphi

| journal = IEEE Software

| volume = 12

| issue = 6

| pages = 8–12

| publisher = [[IEEE Computer Society]]

| date = November 1995

| accessdate = 2008-03-28

| doi = 10.1109/52.469755

| url-access = subscription

}}</ref><ref>{{cite web

| url = http://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/afs-paper.ps

| title = The Heroic Hacker: Legends of the Computer Age

| author = Erik Brunvand

| date = October 15, 1996

| format = [[PostScript]]

| page = 4

| accessdate = 2008-03-28

}}</ref><ref>{{cite web

| url = http://www.suslik.org/Humour/Computer/Langs/real_prog2.html

| title = More About Real Programmers

| accessdate = 2008-03-28

| archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20080419225755/http://www.suslik.org/Humour/Computer/Langs/real_prog2.html

| archivedate = 2008-04-19

}}</ref> [[webcomic]]s<ref>[http://xkcd.com/378/ REAL programmers] xkcd.com</ref> and in-jokes&mdash;although the alleged defining features of a "Real Programmer" differ with time and place.

==See also==

*{{§l|Pascal (programming language)|Early criticism}}

==References==

{{reflist}}

== Notes ==

{{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}

==External links==

*[http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (full original)]

[[Category:Computer folklore]]

[[Category:Pascal (programming language)]]

[[Category:1983 essays]]

[[Category:1983 in computing]]

[[Category:Parodies of literature]]

[[Category:Computer humour]]