<TITLE>Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL</TITLE>
<H2 align=center>Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL</H2>
<H4 align=center><em>Ed Post<br>
Graphic Software Systems<br>
P.O. Box 673<br>
25117 S.W. Parkway<br>
Wilsonville, OR 97070<br>
Copyright (c) 1982<br>
</H4></EM>
<H4 align=center><KBD> (decvax | ucbvax | cbosg | pur-ee | lbl-unix)!teklabs!ogcvax!gss1144!evp</KBD></H4>
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 <KBD>"DO 10 I=1,10"</KBD> and <KBD>"ABEND"</KBD> (they
actually talked in capital letters, you understand), and the rest of
the world said things like <EM>"computers are too complicated for
me"</EM> and <EM>"I can't relate to computers -- they're so
impersonal"</EM>. (A previous work [1] points out that Real Men don't
"relate" to anything, and aren't afraid of being impersonal.) <P>
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 anyone can buy and even understand their very own Personal
Computer. The Real Programmer is in danger of becoming extinct, of
being replaced by high-school students with TRASH-80s! <P>
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). <P>
<H3>LANGUAGES</H3>
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, <EM>"How do you pronounce your name?"</EM>. He replied
<EM>"You can either call me by name, pronouncing it 'Veert', or call
me by value, 'Worth'."</EM> 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. <P>
<UL>
<LI> Real Programmers do List Processing in FORTRAN.
<LI> Real Programmers do String Manipulation in FORTRAN.
<LI> Real Programmers do Accounting (if they do it at all) in FORTRAN.
<LI> Real Programmers do Artificial Intelligence programs in FORTRAN.
</UL> <P>
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. <P>
<H3> STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING</H3>
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 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: <P>
<UL>
<LI> Real Programmers aren't afraid to use GOTOs.
<LI> Real Programmers can write five page long DO loops without
getting confused.
<LI> Real Programmers enjoy Arithmetic IF statements because they make
the code more interesting.
<LI> Real Programmers write self-modifying code, especially if it
saves them 20 nanoseconds in the middle of a tight loop.
<LI> Programmers don't need comments: the code is obvious.
<LI> Since FORTRAN doesn't have a structured <KBD>IF, REPEAT
... UNTIL</KBD>, or <KBD>CASE</KBD> statement, Real Programmers don't
have to worry about not using them. Besides, they can be simulated
when necessary using assigned <KBD>GOTO</KBD>s.
</UL> <P>
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 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. <P>
<H3> OPERATING SYSTEMS</H3>
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. <P>
Unix is a lot more complicated of course -- the typical Unix hacker
never can remember what the <KBD>PRINT</KBD> 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. <P>
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.) <P>
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
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 are mistaken. <P>
<H3> PROGRAMMING TOOLS</H3>
What kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real
Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front panel
of the computer. Back in the days when computers had front panels,
this was actually done occasionally. Your typical Real Programmer
knew the entire bootstrap loader by memory in hex, and toggled it in
whenever it got destroyed by his program. (Back then, memory was
memory -- it didn't go away when the power went off. Today, memory
either forgets things when you don't want it to, or remembers things
long after they're better forgotten.) Legend has it that Seymour
Cray, inventor of the Cray I supercomputer and most of Control Data's
computers, actually toggled the first operating system for the CDC7600
in on the front panel from memory when it was first powered
on. Seymour, needless to say, is a Real Programmer. <P>
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 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. <P>
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. <P>
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 precise. <P>
It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resem-
bles 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. <P>
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". <P>
Some programming tools NOT used by Real Programmers: <P>
<UL>
<LI> FORTRAN preprocessors like MORTRAN and RATFOR. The Cuisinarts of
programming -- great for making Quiche. See comments above on
structured programming.
<LI> Source language debuggers. Real Programmers can read core dumps.
<LI> 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.
<LI> 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].
</UL> <P>
<H3> THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT WORK</H3>
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!): <P>
<UL>
<LI> Real Programmers work for Los Alamos National Laboratory, writing
atomic bomb simulations to run on Cray I supercomputers.
<LI> Real Programmers work for the National Security Agency, decoding
Russian transmissions.
<LI> 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.
<LI> The computers in the Space Shuttle were programmed by Real
Programmers.
<LI> Programmers are at work for Boeing designing the operating
systems for cruise missiles.
</UL> <P>
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 improvisation, 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. <P>
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. <P>
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. <P>
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 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 <EM>"GoTos
Considered Harmful"</EM> -- 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. <P>
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. <P>
<H3> THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT PLAY</H3>
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: <P>
<UL>
<LI> At a party, the Real Programmers are the ones in the corner
talking about operating system security and how to get around it.
<LI> At a football game, the Real Programmer is the one comparing the
plays against his simulations printed on 11 by 14 fanfold paper.
<LI> At the beach, the Real Programmer is the one drawing flowcharts
in the sand.
<LI> A Real Programmer goes to a disco to watch the light show.
<LI> At a funeral, the Real Programmer is the one saying <EM>"Poor
George. And he almost had the sort routine working before the
coronary."</EM>
<LI> 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.
</UL> <P>
<H3> THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITAT</H3>
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. <P>
The typical Real Programmer lives in front of a computer terminal.
Surrounding this terminal are: <P>
<UL>
<LI> Listings of all programs the Real Programmer has ever worked on,
piled in roughly chronological order on every flat surface in the office.
<LI> 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.
<LI> 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.
<LI> Taped to the wall is a line-printer Snoopy calender for the year
1969.
<LI> 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).
<LI> Hiding in the top left-hand drawer of the desk is a stash of
double stuff Oreos for special occasions.
<LI> 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.)
</UL> <P>
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: <P>
<UL>
<LI> No Real Programmer works 9 to 5. (Unless it's 9 in the evening to
5 in the morning.)
<LI> Real Programmers don't wear neckties.
<LI> Real Programmers don't wear high heeled shoes.
<LI> Real Programmers arrive at work in time for lunch. [9]
<LI> A Real Programmer might or might not know his wife's name. He
does, however, know the entire ASCII (or EBCDIC) code table.
<LI> 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.
</UL> <P>
<H3> THE FUTURE</H3>
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? <P>
On the contrary. 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. <P>
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 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. It's like having the best parts of FORTRAN and assembly
language in one place. (Not to mention some of the more creative uses
for <KBD>#define</KBD>.) <P>
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! <P>
<H3>ACKNOWLEGEMENT</H3>
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 <kbd>atd!avsdS:mark</kbd> for
the initial inspriration. <P>
<H3>REFERENCES</H3>
[1] Feirstein, B., <em>Real Men Don't Eat Quiche</em>, New York,
Pocket Books, 1982. <P>
[2] Wirth, N., <em>Algorithms + Datastructures = Programs</em>,
Prentice Hall, 1976. <P>
[3] Xerox PARC editors . . . <P>
[4] Finseth, C., <em>Theory and Practice of Text Editors -
or - a Cookbook for an EMACS</em>, B.S. Thesis,
MIT/LCS/TM-165, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
May 1980. <P>
[5] Weinberg, G., <em>The Psychology of Computer Programming</em>,
New York, Van Nostrabd Reinhold, 1971, page 110. <P>
[6] Dijkstra, E., <em>On the GREEN Language Submitted to the DoD</em>,
Sigplan notices, Volume 3, Number 10, October 1978. <P>
[7] Rose, Frank, <em>Joy of Hacking</em>, Science 82, Volume 3, Number 9,
November 1982, pages 58 - 66. <P>
[8] The Hacker Papers, <em>Psychology Today</em>, August 1980. <P>
[9] <em>Datamation</em>, July, 1983, pp. 263-265. <P>
<hr>
<ADDRESS> <a href="index.html">Hacker's Wisdom</a>/ Real Programmers
Don't Use PASCAL </ADDRESS>
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Last modified: Wed Mar 27 17:48:50 EST 1996
