linuxmafia.com 2013/2013.06.linuxmafia.com/linuxmafia.com/pub/humour/real-programmers

Internet Message Format | 1998-07-27 | 22.1 KB

From: [e-mail] (Clint Wong)
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny.reruns
Subject: Real Programmers Don't Eat Health Food
Keywords: smirk, originally appeared in 1987
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 97 7:20:04 EST

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-80s.

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 either call me by name, pronouncing it 'Veert', or
call me 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 H 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.

  o   Real Programmers do List Processing in FORTRAN.

  o   Real Programmers do String Manipulation in FORTRAN.

  o   Real Programmers do Accounting (if they do it at all) in FORTRAN.

  o   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 language, 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:

  o   Real Programmers aren't afraid to use GOTOs.

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

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

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

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

  o   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 GOTOs.

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 6 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 Time Sharing
system that runs on OS/370, but 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 Seymour 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.
Seymour, 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:

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

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

  o   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.

  o   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!).

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

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

  o   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.

  o   The computers in the Space Shuttle were programmed by Real
      Programmers.

  o   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 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,"{reg} (DoD).  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 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:

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

  o   At a football game, the Real Programmer is the one comparing the
      plays against his simulations printed on 11 by 14 fanfold paper.

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

  o   A Real Programmer goes to discos to watch the light shows.

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

  o   In a grocery store, the Real Programmer is the one who insists on
      running the cans past the laser checkout scanner 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:

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

  o   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.

  o   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.

  o   Taped to the wall is a line-printer Snoopy calendar for the year
      1969.

  o   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.

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

  o   Underneath the Oreos is a flow-charting 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 some 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:

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

  o   Real Programmers don't wear neckties.

  o   Real Programmers don't wear high heeled shoes.

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

  o   A Real Programmer might or might not know his wife's name.  He
      does, however, know the entire ASCII (or EBCDIC) code table.

  o   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 like 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, 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!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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

Copyright (c) 1982 Ed Post, Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville, OR.

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