Real Programmer: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:10, 14 November 2011

Revision as of 18:34, 14 November 2011

Line 6:

==Modernization of the real programmer==

Over the years, the figure of the 'real programmer' was taken up and adapted as new and more powerful programming languages were created. If the real programmer of the eighties did it "all in [[FORTRAN]]"{{Cite quote|date=June 2011}} instead of [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]],<ref>[http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html ''Real Programmers use FORTRAN. Quiche Eaters use PASCAL'']</ref> one of the nineties might have done it "all in [[C (programming language)|C]]"{{Cite quote|date=June 2011}} rather than [[C++]] or [[Java (programming language)|Java]], or "all in [[Perl]]"{{Cite quote|date=June 2011}} rather than [[Python (programming language)|Python]] or [[Ruby (programming language)|Ruby]].

The term is often used to describe a more bare-metal way of doing something &ndash; for example: "Real Programmers don't use [[integrated development environment|IDEs]], they write programs using <code>cat > [[a.out]]</code>" (that is, they write machine-readable binary files from beginning to end without making any mistakes).{{Citation needed|date=June 2011}} 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.{{Citation needed|date=June 2011}} In turn, these C programmers refer to older [[Assembly_language#Assembler|Assembly]] programmers in the same way.{{Citation needed|date=June 2011}}