"Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" (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 Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as anal ...

written by Ed Post of Tektronix, Inc., and published in July 1983 as a

letter to the editor A letter to the editor (LTE) is a letter sent to a publication about an issue of concern to the reader. Usually, such letters are intended for publication. In many publications, letters to the editor may be sent either through conventional ma ...

in ''

Datamation ''Datamation'' is a computer magazine that was published in print form in the United States between 1957 and 1998,

''.Volume 29 number 7

History

Widely circulated on

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

in its day, and well known in the computer software industry, the article compares and contrasts ''real programmers'', who use punch cards and write programs in FORTRAN or

assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence b ...

, with modern-day "quiche eaters" who use programming languages such as

Pascal Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Frenc ...

which support

structured programming Structured programming is a programming paradigm aimed at improving the clarity, quality, and development time of a computer program by making extensive use of the structured control flow constructs of selection ( if/then/else) and repetition ( ...

and impose restrictions meant to prevent or minimize common bugs due to inadvertent programming logic errors. Also mentioned are feats such as

the inventor ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

of the

Cray-1 The Cray-1 was a supercomputer designed, manufactured and marketed by Cray Research. Announced in 1975, the first Cray-1 system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976. Eventually, over 100 Cray-1s were sold, making it one of the ...

supercomputer toggling in''Toggling in'' refers to setting an array of toggle switches or rocker switches which supplement program memory the first operating system for the CDC 7600 through the front panel without notes when it was first powered on. The next year

Ed Nather R. Edward Nather (1926 – 2014) was the Rex G. Baker Jr. and McDonald Observatory Centennial Research Professor Emeritus in Astronomy at UT Austin. He pioneered the fields of asteroseismology of white dwarfs, and observational studies of inte ...

’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 In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, he ...

numbers. Directly.'" Since then, the

computer folklore A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These progr ...

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 solutions— closer to the hardware. The term is used in many subsequent articles,

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be c ...

sREAL programmers
xkcd.com and in-jokes—although the alleged defining features of a "Real Programmer" differ with time and place.

References

Notes

{{reflist, group=lower-alpha

External links

Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (full original)
Computer folklore Pascal (programming language) 1983 essays 1983 in computing Parodies of literature

History

See also

References

Notes

External links