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| T H E R E A L P R O G R A M M E R |
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| |Ed Post, "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal", | |
| |_DATAMATION_, July 1983, pp. 263-265 (Readers' Forum).| |
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Page 1
Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal
1 INTRODUCTION
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 to 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 saving).
2 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 FORTRAM-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. So, please note:
Page 2
1. Real Programmers do List Processing in FORTRAN.
2. Real Programmers do String Manipulation in FORTRAN.
3. Real Programmers do Accounting (if they do it at all) in
FORTRAN.
4. 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.
3 STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING
The academics in computer science have got into the
"structured programming" rut over the past few years. They
claim that programs are more easily understood if the
programmers use some special language constructs and techniques.
They don't all agree on exactly which constructs, of course, and
the examples they use to illustrate their particular point of
view invariably fit on a single page of some obscure journal or
other - 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 noughts and crosses
program, use five different computer languages, and create 1,000
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:
1. Real Programmers aren't afraid to use GOTO's.
2. Real Programmers can write five page long DO loops without
getting confused.
3. Real Programmers like Arithmetic IF statements - they make
the code more interesting.
4. Real Programmers write self-modifying code, especially if
they can save20 nano-seconds in the middle of a tight loop.
5. Since FORTRAN doesn't have a structured IF, REPEAT...
UNTIL, or CASE statement, Real Programmers don't have to
worry about not using them. Anyway, they can always be
simulated when necessary, using assigned GOTO's.
Data Structures have also had a lot of attention lately.
Abstract Data Types, Structures, Pointers, Lists and Strings
have all become popular in certain circles. Wirth (the
above-mentioned Quiche Eater) actually wrote a whole book [2]
Page 3
contending that you could write a program based on Data
Structures, instead of the other way round. 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 structures 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.
4 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 school kids 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 looking at 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 Time Sharing system that runs on OS/370, but after
careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that they
were mistaken.
5 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 on occasion. 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 was turned off. Today, memory either forgets
things when you don't want it to, or remembers things long after
they are best forgotten.) Legend has it that Seymour Cray,
Page 4
inventor of the Cray I and II supercomputers - 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. Needless to say, Seymour Cray is a Real
Programmer.
One of my favourite Real Programmers was a systems
programmer for Texas Instruments. One day he got a long
distance phone 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 choose from, and the Real Programmer must take care to select
the one which most reflects his personal style. Many people
believe that the best text editors in the world are those
developed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre 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 never talk to a 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 the Real Programmer considers "what you
see is what you get" to be 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 typing error whilst talking to 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 ever
think of sending anything less than a Real Programmer to do the
Page 5
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:
1. FORTRAN preprocessors like MORTRAN and RATFOR. The
Cuisinarts of programming - great for making Quiche. See
comments above on structured programming.
2. Source language debuggers - Real Programmers can read core
dumps.
3. 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.
4. 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].
6 THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT WORK
Where does the Real Programmer work? What programs are
worthy of the efforts of such a talented 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|).
1. Real Programmers work for Los Alamos National Laboratory,
writing atomic bomb simulations to run on Cray I/II
supercomputers.
2. Real Programmers work for the National Security Agency,
decoding the Russian transmissions.
3. It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real
Programmers that our boys got to the moon and back before
the Russkies.
4. Real Programmers are at work for Boeing, designing the
operating systems for Cruise missiles ( - creativity at it's
best|?|).
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 on 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
Page 6
bytes of unused memory in a Voyager craft 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 Defence 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 Defence Department decided that all
defence programs should be written in some grand unified
language called "ADA" ((c) 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 destined to cripple the creativity of the Real
Programmer. Fortunately, the language adopted by the Defence
Department has enough interesting features to make it
approachable - its 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 "GoTo's 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 no-one 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.
7 THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT PLAY
Generally, the Real Programmer plays the same way as he
works - with computers. He is constantly amazed that his
employer actually pays him for doing 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 recognising Real Programmers away from the computer
room:
Page 7
1. At a party, the Real Programmers are the ones sitting in the
corner talking about operating systems security and how to
get round it.
2. At a football game, the Real Programmer is the one comparing
each move against his simulations printed on 11 by 14
fanfold listing paper.
3. At the beach, the Real Programmer is the one drawing
flowcharts in the sand.
4. At a funeral, the Real Programmer is the one saying "Poor
George. And he almost had that sort routine working before
the heart-attack."
5. In a supermarket, the Real Programmer is the one who insists
on running the tin cans past the laser checkout scanner
himself, because he never could trust keypunch operators to
get it right first time.
8 THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITAT
What sort of environment does the Real Programmer work 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, its 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:
1. Listings of all programs the Real Programmer has ever worked
on, piled inroughly chronological order on every flat
surface in his office.
2. Some half-dozen or so partly filled cups of cold coffee.
Occasionally, there will be cigarette butts floating in the
coffee (when the ashtray could not be found due to the
listings). In some cases, the cups will contain Unsparkling
Orange.
3. 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.
4. Taped to the wall is a lineprinter Snoopy calendar for the
year 1969.
5. Strewn about the floor are several wrappers for chocolate
digestive biscuits and Twixes - the types made pre-stale at
the factory so they don't get any worse while waiting in the
vending machine.
Page 8
6. Hiding in the top left-hand drawer of the desk is a stash of
Smarties for special occasions.
7. Underneath the Smarties 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 or 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 also creates a convenient excuse for
not doing the documentation. In general:
1. No Real Programmer works 9 to 5 (unless it's the ones at
night).
2. Real Programmers don't wear neckties.
3. Real Programmers don't wear high-heeled shoes.
4. Real Programmers arrive at work in time for lunch [7].
5. A Real Programmer might or might not know his wife's name.
He does, however, know the entire ASCII (or EBCDIC) code
table.
6. Real Programmers don't know how to cook. Supermarkets
aren't open at three in the morning. Real Programmers
survive on Mars Bars and coffee.
9 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 leaving school these days can do hex
arithmetic without a calculator. 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
so-called "computer scientists" manage to get degrees without
ever having to learn FORTRAN| Are we destined to become an
industry of UNIX hackers and PASCAL programmers?
Page 9
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 to FORTRAN 66 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, 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
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], [8]) leaving places
like Stanford and MIT 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.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Jan E., Dave S., Rich G., Rich E., for
their help in characterising the Real Programmer, Kathy E. for
putting up with it, and atd|avsdS:mark for the initial
inspiration. (And me - Dave N. - for typing it onto our
machine - a worthy project||)
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, Awe.: "Recent Research in Text Processing", IEEE
Trans. Prof. Commun., Vol PC-23, No. 4, Dec 4th 1980.
Page 10
[4] Finseth, C.: "Theory and Practice of Text Editors - or - a
Cookbook for An EMACS", B.S. thesis, MIT/LCS/TM-165,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 1980.
[5] Weinberg, G.: "The Psychology of Computer Programming", New
York, Von 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] sdcarl|lin, "Real Programmers", UUcp-net, Thurs Oct 21
16:55:16 1982.
[8] Rose, Frank.: "Joy of Hacking", Science 82, Vol 3 No. 9,
Nov 82, pp 58-66.
[9] "The Hacker Papers", Psychology Today, August 1980.
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