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| Title: | -={ H A C K E R S }=- |
| Notice: | Write locked - see NOTED::HACKERS |
| Moderator: | DIEHRD::MORRIS |
|
| Created: | Thu Feb 20 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Mon Aug 03 1992 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 680 |
| Total number of notes: | 5456 |
44.0. "HACKERS = REALPROGRAMMERS ?" by ZUR01::STIEGER () Sun Aug 12 1984 05:25
it's sunday_morning 04:23 (real 'HACKERS' are still awake .....)
Subj: 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).
Page 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, gave a talk once at which he was asked "How do you
pronounce your name?". He replied, "You can call me by name,
pronouncing it 'Virt', or call be by value, 'Worth'." One can tell
immediately from this comment that Nicklaus Wirth is a Quiche
Eater. The only parameter-passing mechanism endorsed by Real
Programmers is call-by-value-return, as implemented in the IBM/370
FORTRAN-G and like compilers. Real Programmers don't need all
these abstract concepts to get their jobs done; they are perfectly
happy with a keypunch, a FORTRAN IV compiler, and a beer.
**********
Real Programmers do List Processing in FORTRAN.
**********
Real Programmers do string manipulation in FORTRAN.
**********
Real Programmers do acounting (if they do it at all) in FORTRAN.
**********
Real Programmers do Artificial Intelligence programs in FORTRAN.
If you can't do it in FORTRAN, do it in Assembly language. If you
can't do it in Assembly, it isn't worth doing.
Page 2
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
Page 3
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.
Page 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 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-l70. A good programmer can
find and understand the description of the IJK305I error he just
got in his JCL manual. A great programmer can write JCL without
referring to the manual at all. A truly outstanding programmer can
find bugs buried in a six-megabyte core dump without using a hex
calculator. (I have actually seen this done.)
OS is a truly remarkable operating system. It's possible to
destroy days of work with a single misplaced space, so alertness
in the programming staff is encouraged. The best way to approach
the system is through a keypunch. Some people claim there is a
Timesharing System that runs on OS-l70, but after careful study I
have come to the conclusion that they were mistaken.
Page 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 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).
Page 6
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).
Page 7
THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT WORK
Where does the typical Real Programmer work? What kind of
programs are worthy of the efforts of so talented an individual?
You can be sure that no Real Programmer would be caught dead
writing accounts-receivable programs in COBOL, or sorting mailing
lists for People magazine. A Real Programmer wants tasks of
earth-shaking importance (literally!).
**********
Real Programmers work for Los Alamos National Laboratory, writing
atomic bomb simulations to run on Cray I supercomputers.
**********
Real Programmers work for the National Security Agency, decoding
Russian transmissions.
**********
It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real Programmers
working for NASA that our boys got to the moon and back before the
Russkies.
**********
Real Programmers are at work for Boeing designing the operating
systems for cruise missiles.
Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the
entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by
heart. With a combination of large ground-based FORTRAN programs
and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are
able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation,
hitting ten- kilometer-wide windows at Saturn after six years in
space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios,
and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a
pattern-matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory
in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and
photographed a new moon of Jupiter.
The current plan for the Galileo spacecraft is to use a
gravity assist trajectory past Mars on the way to Jupiter. This
trajectory passes within 80 +/-3 kilometers of the surface of
Mars. Nobody is going to trust a PASCAL program (or a PASCAL
programmer) for navigation to these tolerances.
As you can tell, many of the world's Real Programmers work
for the U.S. Government, mainly the Defense Department. This is as
it should be. Recently, however, a black cloud has formed on the
Real Programmer horizon. It seems that some highly placed Quiche
Eaters at the Defense Department decided that all defense programs
should be written in some grand unified language called "ADA". For
Page 8
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.
Page 9
THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT PLAY
Generally, the Real Programmer plays the same way he works,
with computers. He is constantly amazed that his employer actually
pays him to do what he would be doing for fun anyway (although he
is careful not to express this opinion out loud). Occasionally,
the Real Programmer does step out of the office for a breath of
fresh air and a beer or two. Some tips on recognizing Real
Programmers away from the computer room:
**********
At a party, the Real Programmers are the ones in the corner
talking about operating system security and how to get around it.
**********
At a football game, the Real Programmer is the one comparing the
plays against his simulations printed on 11x14 fanfold paper.
**********
At the beach, the Real Programmer is the one drawing flowcharts in
the sand.
**********
At a funeral, the Real Programmer is the one saying "Poor George.
And he almost had the sort routine working before the coronary."
**********
In a grocery store, the Real Programmer is the one who insists on
running the cans past the laser checkout himself, because he never
could trust keypunch operators to get it right the first time.
Page 10
THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITAT
What sort of environment does the Real Programmer function
best in? This is an important question for the managers of Real
Programmers. Considering the amount of money it costs to keep one
on the staff, it's best to put him (or her) in an environment
where he can get his work done.
The typical Real Programmer lives in front of a computer
terminal. Surrounding this terminal are:
**********
Listings of all programs the Real Programmer has ever worked on,
piled in roughly chronological order on every flat surface in the
office.
**********
Some half-dozen or so partly filled cups of cold coffee.
Occasionally, there will be cigarette butts floating in the
coffee. In some cases, the cups will contain Orange Crush.
**********
Unless he is very good, there will be copies of the OS JCL manual
and the Principles of Operation open to some particularly
interesting pages.
**********
Taped to the wall is a lineprinter Snoopy calendar of the year
1969.
**********
Strewn about the floor are several wrappers for peanut butter
filled cheese bars, the type that are made pre-stale at the bakery
so they can't get any worse while waiting in the vending machine.
**********
Hiding in the top left-hand drawer of the desk is a stash of
double-stuffed Oreos for special occasions.
**********
Underneath the Oreos is a flowcharting template, left there by the
previous occupant of the office. (Real Programmers write programs,
not documentation. Leave that to the maintenance people.)
The Real Programmer is capable of working 30, 40, even 50
hours at a stretch, under intense pressure. In fact, he prefers it
that way. Bad response time doesn't bother the Real Programmer, it
gives him a chance to catch a little sleep between compiles. If
there is not enough schedule pressure on the Real Programmer, he
Page 11
tends to make things more challenging by working on the small but
interesting part of the problem for the first nine weeks, then
finishing the rest in the last week, in two or three 50-hour
marathons. This not only impresses the hell out of his manager,
who was despairing of ever getting the project done on time, but
creates a convenient excuse for not doing the documentation. In
general:
**********
No Real Programmer works 9 to 5 (unless it's the ones at night).
**********
Real Programmers don't wear neckties.
**********
Real Programmers don't wear high-heeled shoes.
**********
Real Programmers arrive at work in time for lunch (9).
**********
Real Programmers might or might not know their spouse's name. They
do, however, know the entire ASCII (or EBCDIC) code table.
**********
Real Programmers don't know how to cook. Grocery stores aren't
open at three in the morning. Real Programmers survive on Twinkies
and coffee.
Page 12
THE FUTURE
What of the future? It is a matter of some concern to Real
Programmers that the latest generation of computer programmers are
not being brought up with the same outlook on life as their
elders. many of them have never seen a computer with a front
panel. Hardly anyone graduating from school these days can do hex
arithmetic without a calculator. College graduates these days are
soft, protected from the realities of programming by source-level
debuggers, text editors that count parentheses, and "user
friendly" operating systems. Worst of all, some of these alleged
"computer scientists" manage to get degrees without ever learning
FORTRAN! Are we destined to become an industry of Unix hackers and
PASCAL programmers?
From my experience, I can only report that the future is
bright for Real Programmers everywhere. Neither OS-370 nor FORTRAN
show any signs of dying out, despite all the efforts of PASCAL
programmers the world over. Even more subtle tricks, like adding
structured coding constructs to FORTRAN have failed. Oh sure, some
computer vendors have come out with FORTRAN 77 compilers, but
every one of them has a way of converting itself back into a
FORTRAN 66 compiler at the drop of an option card, to compile DO
loops as God meant them to be.
Even Unix might not be as bad on Real Programmers as it once
was. The latest release of Unix has the potential of an operating
system worthy of any Real Programmer, two different and subtly
incompatible user interfaces, an arcane and complicated teletype
driver, and virtual memory. If you ignore the fact that it's
"structured", even 'C' programming can be appreciated by the Real
Programmer: after all, there's no type checking, variable names
are seven (ten? eight?) characters long, and the added bonus of
the Pointer data type is thrown in, like having the best parts of
FORTRAN and assembly language in one place (not to mention some of
the more creative uses for #DEFINE).
No, the future isn't all that bad. Why, in the past few
years, the popular press has even commented on the bright new crop
of computer nerds and hackers ((7) and (8)) leaving places like
Stanford and M.I.T. for the Real World. From all evidence, the
spirit of Real Programming lives on in these young men and women.
As long as there are ill- defined goals, bizarre bugs, and
unrealistic schedules, there will be Real Programmers willing to
jump in and Solve The Problem, saving the documentation for later.
Long live FORTRAN!
Page 13
ACKNOWLEGEMENT
I would like to thank Jan E., Dave S., Rich G., Rich E., for
their help in characterizing the Real Programmer, Kathy E. for
putting up with it, and atd!avsdS:mark for the initial
inspiration.
(DEC hacker note: this came from a paper that surfaced in
Bedford, unsigned. The author apparently is a Unix hacker (note
the node name). Does anyone know where this came from?)
REFERENCES
(1) Feirstein, B., "Real Men don't Eat Quiche", New York, Pocket
Books, 1982.
(2) Wirth, N.,"Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs", Prentice
Hall, 1976.
(3) Ilson, R., "Recent Research in Text Processing", IEEE
Trans.Prof. Commun., Vol. PC-23, No. 4, Dec. 4, 1980.
(4) Finseth, C.,"Theory and Practice of Text Editors, or, a
Cookbook for an EMACS", B.S. Thesis, MIT/LCS/PM-165,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 1980.
(5) Weinberg, G., "The Psychology of Computer Programming", New
York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971, p. 110.
(6) Dijkstra, E., "On the GREEN language submitted to the DoD",
Sigplan notices, Vol. 3 No. 10, Oct 1978.
(7) Rose, Frank, "Joy of Hacking", Science 82, Vol. 3 No. 9, Nov
82, pp. 58-66.
(8) "The Hacker Papers", Psychology Today, August 1980.
(9) sdcarl!lin, "Real Programmers", UUCP-net, Thu Oct 21 16:55:16
1982
Page 14
| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 44.1 | | HACKER::ATTWOOL | | Sun Aug 12 1984 12:45 | 1 |
| I thought that Sunday was a Day of Rest for Hackers ???????
|
| 44.2 | | ZUR01::STIEGER | | Sun Aug 12 1984 22:23 | 4 |
| Yes Sunday is the DAY_OF_REST for Hackers, but 4:23AM counts
as Saturday ......... Isn't it ?
Sunday-evening 9:22PM (still 'hacking') : Juergen
|
| 44.3 | | VAXUUM::DYER | | Mon Aug 13 1984 00:53 | 2 |
| We hackers stay up Sunday nights so we can start hacking on Monday...
<_Jym_>
|
| 44.5 | | ZEPPO::TIBBERT | | Fri Aug 24 1984 17:30 | 6 |
|
This note asked for the original source: Datamation, July 1983 for
those who are interested.
l.
|
| 44.6 | | VAXUUM::DYER | | Mon Aug 27 1984 13:01 | 19 |
| Let's give credit where credit is due. The following is the title
page of the article. It keeps getting removed by people who routinely try
to take credit for other people's work.
(-: Smiley faces on that last sentence, in case you didn't know. :-)
<_Jym_>
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
March 24, 1983
Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL
Ed Post
Tektronix, Inc.
P.O. Box 1000 m/s 63-205
Wilsonville, OR 97070
Copyright (c) 1982
(decvax | ucbvax | cbosg | pur-ee | lbl-unix)!teklabs!iddic!evp
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