"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
''Real Men Don't Eat Quiche'' is a best-selling tongue-in-cheek book satirizing stereotypes of masculinity by the American screenwriter and humorist Bruce Feirstein, published in 1982 ().
The title alludes to the gender associations of quiche ...
'') is an essay about
computer programming
Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called computer program, programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of proc ...
written by Ed Post of Tektronix, Inc., and published in July 1983 as a reader's contribution 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 (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...
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 computing, assembly language (alternatively 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 bet ...
, with modern-day "quiche eaters" who use programming languages such as Pascal 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 specific disciplined use of the structured control flow constructs of selection ( if/then/else) and repet ...
and impose restrictions meant to prevent or minimize common bugs due to inadvertent programming logic errors. Also mentioned are feats such as
Seymour Cray
Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996) – was an American
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, eighty Cray-1s were sold, making it one of the ...
supercomputer, using manual control switches to load the first operating system for the
CDC 7600
The CDC 7600 was designed by Seymour Cray to be the successor to the CDC 6600, extending Control Data Corporation, Control Data's dominance of the supercomputer field into the 1970s. The 7600 ran at 36.4 MHz (27.5 ns clock cycle) and had ...
The Story of Mel
The Story of Mel is an archetypical piece of computer programming folklore. Its subject, Melvin Kaye, is an exemplary " Real Programmer" whose subtle techniques fascinate his colleagues.
Story
Ed Nather's ''The Story of Mel'' details the extrao ...
'', also known as ''The realest programmer of all'', extended the theme. Immortalized in the piece is Mel Kaye of the
Royal McBee
Royal Consumer Information Products, Inc. (formerly The Royal Typewriter Company) is an American technology company founded in January 1904 as a manufacturer of typewriters. Royal’s product line has evolved to include cash registers, shredders, ...
Computer Corporation. As the story famously puts it, "He wrote in machine code—in 'raw, unadorned, inscrutable
hexadecimal
Hexadecimal (also known as base-16 or simply hex) is a Numeral system#Positional systems in detail, positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of sixteen. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using ten symbo ...
numbers. Directly.'"
Since then, the 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— 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 the internet, such as on a website or a mobile app. While many webcomics are published exclusively online, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or ...
sREAL programmers xkcd.com and in-jokes—although the alleged defining features of a "Real Programmer" differ with time and place.