From: logier@cheops.qld.tne.oz.au (Rob Logie)
Subject: Real men don't use Pascal
Summary: The Real men don't use Pascal story (Sorry about sexist lang. )
Organization: Telecom Australia, TNE Computer Support Services
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 04:23:14 GMT

As requested by many people .



Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL


				  Ed Post

			 Graphic Software Systems
			       P.O. Box 673
			    25117 S.W. Parkway
			   Wilsonville, OR 97070

			    Copyright (c) 1982

 (decvax | ucbvax | cbosg | pur-ee | lbl-unix)!teklabs!ogcvax!gss1144!evp

     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 computerized microwave ovens, 12 year old kids
can blow Real Men out of the water playing Asteroids and Pac-Man, and  any-
one  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. Understanding
these differences will give these kids something to aspire  to	--  a  role
model,	a Father Figure. It will also help employers of Real Programmers to
realize 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).

1.  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, was  once
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 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 Accounting (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 language, it isn't worth doing.


2.  STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING
--------------------------
     Computer science academicians have gotten into  the  "structured  pro-
gramming"  rut  over  the  past several years. They claim that programs are
more easily understood if the programmer uses some  special  language  con-
structs  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 GOTOs.

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

*    Real Programmers enjoy Arithmetic IF statements because they make	the
     code more interesting.

*    Real Programmers write self-modifying code,  especially  if  it  saves
     them 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 GOTOs.


     Data structures have also gotten a lot of press lately. Abstract  Data
Types, Structures, Pointers, Lists, and Strings have become popular in cer-
tain 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 and can e treated   that  
way  just  as  easily without messing up your programing 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.


3.  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 lit-
tle 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 USENET
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/370 is a truly remarkable operating system. It's possible  to  des-
troy  days  of work with a single misplaced space, so alertness in the pro-
gramming 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 are mistaken.


4.  PROGRAMMING TOOLS
---------------------

     What kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real  Pro-
grammer  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  actu-
ally  done  occasionally.  Your  typical  Real	Programmer  knew the entire
bootstrap loader by memory in hex, and toggled it in whenever it  got  des-
troyed	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 sys-
tem 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 some important work. Jim was  able  to  repair
the  damage over the phone, getting the user to toggle in disk I/O instruc-
tions at the front panel, repairing system tables in hex, reading  register
contents  back	over  the phone. The moral of this story: while a Real Pro-
grammer 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 are probably the most well known of this class of editors.  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  pre-
cise.

     It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely  resem-
bles transmission line noise than readable text [4]. One of the more enter-
taining 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  --
introduc  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 work-
ing 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 send-
ing  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  pro-
     gramming  -- 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 maintainance 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].


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  Rus-
     sian 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
     cosmonauts.

*    The computers in the Space Shuttle were programmed  by  Real  Program-
     mers.

*    Real Programmers are at work for Boeing designing the  operating  sys-
     tems for cruise missiles.


     Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet  Pro-
pulsion  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 can to do incredible feats of navigation and impro-
visation,  such  as  hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six
years in space,  and  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.

     One plan for the upcoming Galileo spacecraft mission is to use a grav-
ity  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" (registered trademark, DoD).  For a while, it seemed
that ADA was destined to become a language that went against all  the  pre-
cepts  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 Con-
sidered 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  some-
thing  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 challange in that.)
Everyone  working  at LucasFilm is a Real Programmer. (It would be crazy to
turn down the money of 50 million Star Wars 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.

6.  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 11 by 14 fanfold paper.

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

*    A Real Programmer goes to a disco to watch the light show.

*    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 run-
     ning  the	cans  past  the  laser checkout scanner himself, because he
     never could trust keypunch operators to get it right the first time.


7.  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. Consid-
ering 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 line-printer Snoopy calender for the year 1969.

*    Strewn about the floor are several wrappers for peanut  butter  filled
     cheese  bars (the type that are made 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-
     stuff Oreos for special occasions.

*    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 maintainence 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 inpresses 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 9 in the evening to 5 in
     the morning.)

*    Real Programmers don't wear neckties.

*    Real Programmers don't wear high heeled shoes.

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

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

*    Real Programmers don't know how to cook. Grocery stores  aren't  often
     open at 3 a.m., so they survive on Twinkies and coffee.



8.  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?

     On the contrary.  From my experience,  I  can  only  report  that	the
future	is  bright for Real Programmers everywhere. Neither OS/370 nor FOR-
TRAN show any signs of dying out, despite all the efforts  of  Pascal  pro-
grammers  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. It has two  different  and  subtly  incompatible  user
interfaces,  an  arcane and complicated terminal driver, virtual memory. If
you ignore the fact that it's structured, even C programming can be  appre-
ciated	by  the Real Programmer: after all, there's no type checking, vari-
able names are seven (ten?  eight?) characters long, and the added bonus of
the  Pointer data type is thrown in. It'slike having the best parts of FOR-
TRAN 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!

9.  ACKNOWLEGEMENT
------------------
     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
inspriration.
-- 
Rob Logie,   Telecom Australia    | The opions expressed are mine alone and in
           ( A.C.N. 051 775 556 ) | no-way reflect the views or policies of the
NWPD-NE Computer Support Services | Australian and Overseas Telecommunications
EMAIL: logier@cheops.qld.tne.oz.au| Corporation. "These are my opinions alone"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers