
Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL

Back  in  the  good  old  days--the  "Golden  Era"   of computers--it  was 
easy  to  separate the men from the boys (sometimes called "Real Men"  and 
"Quiche  Eaters"  in  the literature).  During this period, the Real Men were
the ones that understood computer programming, and the Quiche  Eaters were  the
ones that didn't.  A real computer programmer said things like "DO 10 I=1,10"
and "ABEND" (they actually talked in  capital  letters,  you  understand), and
the rest of the world said things like "computers are  too  complicated  for 
me"   and   "I   can't   relate   to  computers--they're  so impersonal".  A
previous work [1] points out that  Real  Men don't  "relate"  to  anything, 
and  aren't  afraid of being impersonal.

But, as usual, times change.  We are faced today with a world  in which little
old ladies can get computers in their microwave ovens, 12-year-old kids can
blow Real Men  out  of the  water playing Asteroids and Pac-Man, and anyone can
buy and even understand their very own Personal  Computer.   The Real 
Programmer  is in danger of becoming extinct, of being replaced by high-school
students with TRASH-80's.

There is a clear need  to  point  out  the  differences between  the typical
high-school junior Pac-Man player and a Real Programmer.  If this difference is
made clear, it  will give  these  kids  something  to  aspire to--a role model,
a father figure.  It will also help explain to  the  employers of Real
Programmers why it would be a mistake to replace the Real Programmers on their 
staff  with  12-year-old  Pac-Man players (at a considerable salary savings).


LANGUAGES
---------

The easiest way to tell  a  Real  Programmer  from  the crowd is by the
programming language he (or she) uses.  Real Programmers  use  FORTRAN.  
Quiche   Eaters   use   PASCAL. Nicklaus  Wirth, the designer of PASCAL, gave a
talk once at which he was asked "How do you pronounce  your  name?".   He 
replied, "You can call me by name, pronouncing it 'Virt', or call be by value,
'Worth'." One can  tell  immediately  from this  comment  that  Nicklaus  Wirth
is a Quiche Eater.  The only   parameter-passing   mechanism   endorsed   by   
Real Programmers  is  call-by-value-return, as implemented in the IBM/370
FORTRAN-G  and  like  compilers.   Real  programmers don't  need  all  these 
abstract concepts to get their jobs done;  they are perfectly happy with a
keypunch,  a  FORTRAN IV compiler, and a beer.

*  Real Programmers do List Processing in FORTRAN.

*  Real Programmers do string manipulation in FORTRAN.

*  Real Programmers do acounting (if  they  do  it  at
all) in FORTRAN.

*  Real   Programmers   do   Artificial   Intelligence
programs in FORTRAN.


If you can't do  it  in  FORTRAN,  do  it  in  Assembly language.   If  you 
can't do it in Assembly, it isn't worth doing.



STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING
----------------------

The academics in computer science have gotten into  the "structured 
programming"  rut  over the past several years. They claim that programs are
more easily understood  if  the programmer   uses   some  special  language 
constructs  and techniques.   They  don't  all  agree   on   exactly   which 
constructs,  of  course,  and  the examples they use to show their particular
point of view invariably fit  on  a  single page  of some obscure journal or
another--clearly not enough of an example to convince anyone.  When I got out
of school, I  thought  I was the best programmer in the world.  I could write
an unbeatable tic-tac-toe program, use five  different computer  languages, 
and  create  1000-line  programs  that WORKED.  (Really!) Then I got out into
the Real  World.   My first  task  in  the Real World was to read and
understand a 200,000-line FORTRAN program, then speed it up by  a  factor of 
two.   Any  Real  Programmer  will tell you that all the Structured Coding in 
the  world  won't  help  you  solve  a problem  like  that--it  takes  actual 
talent.   Some quick observations on Real Programmers and Structured
Programming:

*  Real Programmers aren't afraid to use GOTO's.

*  Real Programmers can write five-page-long DO  loops
without getting confused.

*  Real Programmers like  Arithmetic  IF  statements--
they make the code more interesting.

*  Real   Programmers   write   self-modifying   code,
especially  if  they can save 20 nanoseconds in the
middle of a tight loop.

*  Real Programmers don't need comments--the  code  is
obvious.

*  Since  FORTRAN  doesn't  have  a   structured   IF,
REPEAT...UNTIL, or CASE statement, Real Programmers
don't have to worry about not using them.  Besides,
they can be simulated when necessary using assigned
GOTO's.


Data Structures have also gotten a lot of press lately. Abstract   Data  Types,
Structures,  Pointers,  Lists,  and Strings have become popular in certain
circles.  Wirth  (the above-mentioned  Quiche Eater) actually wrote an entire
book [2] contending that you could write a program based on  data structures, 
instead  of  the other way around.  As all Real Programmers know, the only 
useful  data  structure  is  the Array.   Strings,  lists,  structures, 
sets--these  are all special cases of arrays and can be treated that way just 
as easily without messing up your programming language with all sorts of
complications.  The worst thing  about  fancy  data types is that you have to
declare them, and Real Programming Languages, as we all know, have implicit
typing based on the first letter of the (six character) variable name.


OPERATING SYSTEMS
-----------------

What kind  of  operating  system  is  used  by  a  Real Programmer?    CP/M?   
God   forbid--CP/M,  after  all,  is basically a toy operating system.  Even 
little  old  ladies and grade school students can understand and use CP/M.

Unix is a lot more complicated of  course--the  typical Unix  hacker  never 
can  remember what the PRINT command is called this week--but when it gets
right down to it, Unix is a  glorified  video  game.   People don't do Serious
Work on Unix systems:  they send jokes around the world on  UUCP-net and write
adventure games and research papers.

No,  your  Real  Programmer  uses   OS\370.    A   good programmer  can  find 
and understand the description of the IJK305I error he just  got  in  his  JCL 
manual.   A  great programmer  can write JCL without referring to the manual at
all.  A truly outstanding programmer can find bugs buried in a six-megabyte
core dump without using a hex calculator.  (I have actually seen this done.)

OS  is  a  truly  remarkable  operating  system.   It's possible  to  destroy 
days  of work with a single misplaced space, so alertness in the programming
staff is  encouraged. The  best  way to approach the system is through a
keypunch. Some people claim there is a Timesharing System that runs on OS\370, ut  after  careful  study  I  have  come  to  the conclusion that they were
mistaken.


PROGRAMMING TOOLS
----------------

What kind of tools does  a  Real  Programmer  use?   In theory,  a  Real
Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front panel of the
computer.  Back in the days when  computers  had  front  panels,  this was
actually done occasionally.  Your typical Real Programmer knew the  entire 
bootstrap  loader  by  memory  in  hex,  and  toggled  it in whenever it got 
destroyed  by  his  program.   (Back  then, memory  was  memory--it  didn't  go
away when the power went off.  Today, memory either forgets  things  when  you 
don't want  it  to,  or remembers things long after they're better forgotten.)
Legend has it that Seymore Cray, inventor of the Cray  I  supercomputer and
most of Control Data's computers, actually toggled the first operating system
for the  CDC7600 in  on the front panel from memory when it was first powered 
on.  Seymore, needless to say, is a Real Programmer.

One of my  favorite  Real  Programmers  was  a  systems programmer  for  Texas 
Instruments.  One day he got a long-
distance call from a user whose system had  crashed  in  the middle  of  saving
some  important  work.   Jim was able to repair the damage over the phone,
getting the user to toggle in  disk  I/O  instructions  at  the  front panel,
repairing system tables in hex, reading register  contents  back  over the  
phone.   The  moral  of  this  story:   while  a  Real Programmer usually
includes a keypunch  and  lineprinter  in his  toolkit, he can get along with
just a front panel and a telephone in emergencies.

In some companies, text editing no longer  consists  of ten  engineers 
standing in line to use an 029 keypunch.  In fact, the building  I  work  in 
doesn't  contain  a  single keypunch.   The  Real Programmer in this situation
has to do his work with a "text editor" program.  Most systems  supply several
text editors to select from, and the Real Programmer must be careful to  pick 
one  that  reflects  his  personal style.   Many  people  believe that the best
text editors in the world were written at Xerox Palo  Alto  Research  Center 
for   use   on   their   Alto   and  Dorado  computers  [3]. Unfortunately, no
Real Programmer would ever use a  computer whose  operating  system  is  called
SmallTalk,  and  would certainly not talk to the computer with a mouse.

Some of the concepts in these Xerox editors  have  been incorporated  into 
editors running on more reasonably named operating systems--EMACS and VI being
two.  The problem with these  editors  is  that Real Programmers consider "what
you see is what you get" to be just as bad  a  concept  in  Text Editors  as 
it is in women.  No the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you  got 
it"  text  editor--complicated, cryptic,  powerful,  unforgiving,  dangerous.  
TECO,  to be precise.

It has been observed that a TECO command sequence  more closely resembles
transmission line noise than readable text [4].  One of the more entertaining
games to play  with  TECO is  to  type your name in as a command line and try
to guess what it does.  Just about any possible  typing  error  while talking 
with  TECO  will  probably destroy your program--or even worse, introduce
subtle and mysterious bugs in  a  once working subroutine.

For this reason,  Real  Programmers  are  reluctant  to actually edit a program
that is close to working.  They find it  much  easier  to  just  patch  the 
binary  object  code directly,  using a wonderful program called SUPERZAP (or
its equivalent on non-IBM machines).  This works  so  well  that many working
programs on IBM systems bear no relation to the original FORTRAN code.  In many
cases, the  original  source code  is  no  longer available.  When it comes
time to fix a program like this, no manager would even  think  of  sending 
anything  less  than  a  Real  Programmer  to do the job--no Quiche Eating
structured programmer would even know where to start.  This is called "job
security".

Some programming tools NOT used by Real Programmers:

*  FORTRAN preprocessors like MORTRAN and RATFOR.  The
Cuisinarts of programming--great for making Quiche.
See comments above on structured programming.

*  Source language debuggers.   Real  Programmers  can
read core dumps.

*  Compilers with array bounds checking.  They  stifle
creativity,  destroy  most  of the interesting uses
for EQUIVALENCE, and make it impossible  to  modify
the operating system code with negative subscripts.
Worst of all, bounds checking is inefficient.

*  Source code maintenance systems.  A Real Programmer
keeps his code locked up in a card file, because it
implies that its owner cannot leave  his  important
programs unguarded [5].



THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT WORK
---------------------------

Where does the typical Real Programmer work?  What kind of  programs  are 
worthy  of  the efforts of so talented an individual?  You can be sure that no
Real  Programmer  would be  caught  dead  writing  accounts-receivable 
programs  in COBOL, or sorting mailing lists for People magazine.  A Real 
Programmer   wants   tasks   of   earth-shaking   importance (literally!).

*  Real  Programmers  work  for  Los  Alamos  National
Laboratory,  writing atomic bomb simulations to run
on Cray I supercomputers.

*  Real Programmers work  for  the  National  Security
Agency, decoding Russian transmissions.

*  It was largely due to the efforts of  thousands  of
Real Programmers working for NASA that our boys got
to the moon and back before the Russkies.

*  Real Programmers are at work for  Boeing  designing
the operating systems for cruise missiles.


Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of  all  work at  the  Jet 
Propulsion  Laboratory in California.  Many of them know the entire operating
system  of  the  Pioneer  and Voyager  spacecraft  by  heart.  With a
combination of large ground-based FORTRAN  programs  and  small 
spacecraft-based assembly  language  programs, they are able to do incredible 
feats  of   navigation   and   improvisation--hitting   ten-
kilometer-wide  windows  at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or
bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries.  Allegedly, one Real
Programmer managed to tuck a pattern-matching program into a few hundred bytes
of  unused memory  in  a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and
photographed a new moon of Jupiter.

The current plan for the Galileo spacecraft is to use a gravity  assist 
trajectory past Mars on the way to Jupiter. This trajectory passes within  80 
+/-3  kilometers  of  the surface  of Mars.  Nobody is going to trust a PASCAL
program (or a PASCAL programmer) for navigation to these tolerances.

As you can tell, many of the world's  Real  Programmers work   for   the   U.S.
Government--mainly   the  Defense Department.  This is as it should be. 
Recently, however,  a black  cloud  has formed on the Real Programmer horizon. 
It seems that some highly placed Quiche Eaters at  the  Defense Department 
decided  that  all  defense  programs  should be written in some grand unified
language called "ADA".  For  a while,  it seemed that ADA was destined to
become a language that went against all the precepts  of  Real  Programming--a 
language  with structure, a language with data types, strong typing, and
semicolons.  In short, a  language  designed  to cripple  the  creativity  of 
the  typical  Real Programmer. Fortunately,  the  language  adopted  by  DoD  
has   enough interesting   features   to   make   it   approachable--it's 
incredibly complex, includes methods for  messing  with  the operating system
and rearranging memory, and Edsgar Dijkstra doesn't like it [6].  (Dijkstra, as
I;m sure you  know,  was the author of "GoTos Considered Harmful"--a landmark
work in programming methodology, applauded by PASCAL programmers and Quiche  
Eaters   alike.)   Besides,   the  determined  Real Programmer can write
FORTRAN programs in any language.

The Real Programmer might compromise his principles and work on something
slightly more trivial than the destruction of life as we know it, providing
there's enough money in it. There  are  several Real Programmers building video
games at Atari,  for  example.   (But  not   playing   them--a   Real 
Programmer  knows  how  to  beat the machine every time:  no challenge in
that.) Everyone working at LucasFilm is a  Real Programmer.   (It  would  be
crazy to turn down the money of fifty million  Star  Trek  fans.)  The 
proportion  of  Real Programmers  in Computer Graphics is somewhat lower than
the norm, mostly because nobody has found  a  use  for  computer graphics  yet.
On the other hand, all computer graphics is done in FORTRAN, {so there are a
fair number of people doing graphics in order to avoid having to write COBOL
programs.


THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT PLAY
---------------------------

Generally, the Real Programmer plays the  same  way  he works--with  computers.
He  is  constantly amazed that his employer actually pays him to do what he
would be doing  for fun  anyway  (although  he  is  careful  not to express
this opinion out loud).  Occasionally, the Real  Programmer  does step  out of
the office for a breath of fresh air and a beer or two.  Some tips on
recognizing Real Programmers away from the computer room:

*  At a party, the Real Programmers are  the  ones  in
the  corner talking about operating system security
and how to get around it.

*  At a football game, the Real Programmer is the  one
comparing the plays against his simulations printed
on 11x14 fanfold paper.

*  At the  beach,  the  Real  Programmer  is  the  one
drawing flowcharts in the sand.

*  At a funeral, the Real Programmer is the one saying
"Poor  George.   And he almost had the sort routine
working before the coronary."

*  In a grocery store, the Real Programmer is the  one
who  insists  on  running  the  cans past the laser
checkout himself,  because  he  never  could  trust
keypunch operators to get it right the first time.



THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITAT
-------------------------------------

What sort  of  environment  does  the  Real  Programmer function  best  in?  
This  is an important question for the managers of Real Programmers.  
Considering  the  amount  of money  it  costs  to keep one on the staff, it's
best to put him (or her) in an environment where he  can  get  his  work done.

The  typical  Real  Programmer  lives  in  front  of  a computer terminal. 
Surrounding this terminal are:

*  Listings of all programs the  Real  Programmer  has
ever  worked  on,  piled  in  roughly chronological
order on every flat surface in the office.

*  Some half-dozen or so partly filled  cups  of  cold
coffee.   Occasionally,  there  will  be  cigarette
butts floating in the coffee.  In some  cases,  the
cups will contain Orange Crush.

*  Unless he is very good, there will be copies of the
OS  JCL manual and the Principles of Operation open
to some particularly interesting pages.

*  Taped to the wall is a lineprinter Snoopy  calendar
of the year 1969.

*  Strewn about the floor  are  several  wrappers  for
peanut butter filled cheese bars--the type that are
made pre-stale at the bakery so they can't get  any
worse while waiting in the vending machine.

*  Hiding in the top left-hand drawer of the desk is a
stash   of   double-stuffed   Oreos   for   special
occasions.

*  Underneath the Oreos is  a  flowcharting  template,
left  there by the previous occupant of the office.
(Real    Programmers    write     programs,     not
documentation.    Leave  that  to  the  maintenance
people.)


The Real Programmer is capable of working 30, 40,  even 50  hours at a stretch,
under intense pressure.  In fact, he prefers it that way.  Bad response time
doesn't  bother  the Real  Programmer--it  gives  him  a chance to catch a
little sleep between compiles.  If there  is  not  enough  schedule pressure 
on  the  Real  Programmer, he tends to make things more challenging by working
on  the  small  but  interesting part of the problem for the first nine weeks,
then finishing the  rest  in  the  last  week,  in  two  or  three  50-hour 
marathons.   This  not  only  impresses  the hell out of his manager, who was
despairing of ever getting the project done on  time,  but creates a convenient
excuse for not doing the documentation.  In general:

*  No Real Programmer works 9 to 5  (unless  it's  the
ones at night).

*  Real Programmers don't wear neckties.

*  Real Programmers don't wear high-heeled shoes.

*  Real Programmers arrive at work in time  for  lunch
[9].

*  Real Programmers might  or  might  not  know  their
spouse's  name.   They do, however, know the entire
ASCII (or EBCDIC) code table.

*  Real Programmers don't know how to  cook.   Grocery
stores  aren't  open at three in the morning.  Real
Programmers survive on Twinkies and coffee.



THE FUTURE
----------

What of the future?  It is a matter of some concern  to Real  Programmers  that
the  latest  generation of computer programmers are not being brought up with
the  same  outlook on  life  as  their  elders.  many of them have never seen a
computer with a front panel.  Hardly anyone graduating  from school   these  
days   can  do  hex  arithmetic  without  a calculator.   College  graduates 
these  days   are   soft--
protected  from the realities of programming by source-level debuggers, text
editors that count  parentheses,  and  "user friendly"  operating  systems.  
Worst of all, some of these alleged "computer scientists" manage to get degrees
without ever  learning  FORTRAN!   Are  we  destined  to  become  an industry
of Unix hackers and PASCAL programmers?

From my experience, I can only report that  the  future is  bright  for Real
Programmers everywhere.  Neither OS\370 nor FORTRAN show any signs of dying 
out,  despite  all  the efforts  of  PASCAL  programmers  the world over.  Even
more subtle tricks, like adding structured coding  constructs  to FORTRAN  have
failed.   Oh sure, some computer vendors have come out with FORTRAN 77
compilers, but every  one  of  them has  a  way  of  converting  itself  back 
into a FORTRAN 66 compiler at the drop of an option card--to compile DO  loops 
as God meant them to be.

Even Unix might not be as bad on Real Programmers as it once  was.   The latest
release of Unix has the potential of an operating  system  worthy  of  any 
Real  Programmer--two different and subtly incompatible user interfaces, an
arcane and complicated teletype driver, and virtual memory.  If you ignore the
fact that it's "structured", even 'C' programming can be appreciated  by  the 
Real  Programmer:   after  all, there's  no  type  checking,  variable names
are seven (ten? eight?) characters long, and the added bonus of the  Pointer 
data  type  is  thrown  in--like  having  the  best parts of FORTRAN and
assembly language in one place (not  to  mention some of the more creative uses
for #DEFINE).

No, the future isn't all that bad.  Why,  in  the  past few  years,  the 
popular  press  has  even commented on the bright new crop of computer nerds
and hackers ([7] and  [8]) leaving places like Stanford and M.I.T.  for the
Real World. From all evidence, the spirit of Real Programming  lives  on in 
these  young  men  and women.  As long as there are ill-
defined goals,  bizarre  bugs,  and  unrealistic  schedules, there  will be
Real Programmers willing to jump in and Solve The Problem, saving the
documentation for later.  Long  live FORTRAN!


ACKNOWLEGEMENT
--------------

I would like to thank Jan E., Dave S.,  Rich  G.,  Rich E.,  for  their  help
in characterizing the Real Programmer, Kathy E.  for putting up with it, and
atd!avsdS:mark for the initial inspiration.

[DEC hacker note:  this came from a paper that surfaced in  Bedford,  unsigned.
The  author  apparently  is a Unix hacker (note the node name).  Does anyone 
know  where  this came from?]


REFERENCES
----------

[1]  Feirstein, B., "Real Men  don't  Eat  Quiche",  New
York, Pocket Books, 1982.

[2]  Wirth,  N.,  "Algorithms  +   Data   Structures   =
Programs", Prentice Hall, 1976.

[3]  Ilson, R., "Recent Research  in  Text  Processing",
IEEE  Trans.   Prof.  Commun., Vol.  PC-23, No.  4,
Dec.  4, 1980.

[4]  Finseth, C., "Theory and Practice of Text Editors--
or--a   Cookbook   for  an  EMACS",  B.S.   Thesis,
MIT/LCS/PM-165,    Massachusetts    Institute    of
Technology, May 1980.

[5]  Weinberg,   G.,   "The   Psychology   of   Computer
Programming",  New  York,  Van  Nostrand  Reinhold,
1971, p.  110.

[6]  Dijkstra, E., "On the GREEN language  submitted  to
the  DoD",  Sigplan  notices,  Vol.  3 No.  10, Oct
1978.

[7]  Rose, Frank, "Joy of Hacking", Science 82, Vol.   3
No.  9, Nov 82, pp.  58-66.

[8]  "The Hacker Papers", Psychology Today, August 1980.

[9]  sdcarl!lin, "Real Programmers", UUCP-net,  Thu  Oct
21 16:55:16 1982

esting part of the problem for the first nine weeks,
then finishing the  rest  in  the  last  week,  in  two  or  three  50-hour 
marathons.   This  not  only  impresses  the hell out of his manager, who was
despairing of ever getting the project done on  time,  but creates a convenient
excuse for not doing the documentation.  In general:

*  No Real Programmer works 9 to 5  (unless  it's  the
ones at night).

*  Real Programmers don't wear neckties.

*  Real Programmers don't wear high-heeled shoes.

*  Real Programmers arrive at work in time  for  lunch
[9].

*  Real Programmers might  or  might  not  know  their
spouse's  name.   They do, however, know the entire
ASCII (or EBCDIC) code table.

*  Real Programmers don't know how to  coo