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                    "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 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.
 
   * 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.
 

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 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.
 

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 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" ((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
 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 11 by 14 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 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:
 
   * 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 calendar for 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-stuff 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 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:
 
   * 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].
   * 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
     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!
 

Acknowledgement

 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.
 

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/TM-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
 
 
   _________________________________________________________________
 
 
  Last updated on Fri Jul 21 10:11:38 1995
  Michael Stillwell / mist@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au
  
 
   _________________________________________________________________
 
 Disclaimer:
 This is a personal page published by the author. The ideas and
 information expressed on it have not been approved or authorised by
 Monash University either explicitly or impliedly. In no event shall
 Monash University be liable for any damages whatsoever resulting from
 any action arising in connection with the use of this information or
 its publication, including any action for infringement of copyright or
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