Real Programmer: Difference between revisions

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The term '''Real Programmer''' is a term used by [[computer programming|computer programmer]]s to describe the archetypical 'hardcore' programmer. A ''real programmer'' eschews modern or graphical tools such as [[integrated development environment]]s or languages other than [[assembly language]] or [[machine code]] in favour of more direct and efficient solutions - '[[low-level programming language|closer to the hardware]]'.

The term is often used to describe a more [[bare metal]] way of doing something - for example: ''Real Programmers don't use IDEs, they write programs using cat > [[a.out]]'' [(that is, they write machine-readable binary files from beginning to end without making any mistakes]). Each generation tends to slightly redefine a Real Programmer, as coding techniques change. For instance, a young [[Java (programming language)|Java]] programmer might refer to an older [[C (programming language)|C]] programmer as being a Real Programmer. In turn, these C programmers refer to older [[FORTRAN]] programmers in the same way.

The archetypal Real Programmer is [[Mel Kaye]] of the [[Royal McBee]] Computer Corporation who is immortalised in the 'The Story of Mel', one of the most famous pieces of hacker folklore. As the story infamously puts it, he wrote in machine code - in 'raw, unadorned, inscrutable [[hexadecimal]] numbers. Directly.'<ref>[http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html The story of Mel]</ref>