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Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (1982)

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Re: Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (1982)

#14
Kids these days do a lot of disgusting things. They don't know how to write their own linker scripts, read assembly, or code in a real man's language (C). They think dynamic typing is "fun" and "productive". They don't even know how to manage threads or memory and use entire megabytes of RAM to send messages to each other using an inferior version of irc. Primarily they constantly waste precious cycles, eat quiche, and spend the rest of their time trying to solve the trivial problem of generating and consuming html in as many ways as possible. They don't even know who Ken is.

Re: Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (1982)

#16

> 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. Keep in mind that despite Real Programmers being referred to as "he" throughout the article, the Real Programmer who headed that effort was a "she" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist)

Margaret Hamilton did not head the effort. She was a manager on the project, but she didn’t join until relatively late. At the time of Apollo 11 she was in charge of the Command Module’s software (https://www.doneyles.com/LM/ORG/index.html), but most of the work had been done by the time she assumed that position. She later became head of the whole software department, and had a lot of responsibility for modifications for later missions and Skylab, but she and others have greatly exaggerated her role on the project.

Re: Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (1982)

#18

> Real Programmers use FORTRAN. Ahem. No. Real Programmers use machine code. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

I love that story. In fact the whole Jargon File is a great source of elder geek lore. Another good source is http://www.folklore.org/ for tales of the original Mac development team.

Re: Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (1982)

#20
post #15

Real programmers don't use any programming language, they use other programmers.

"By hiring inexperienced workers and indoctrinating them into a religion that taught the concept that metaprogrammers were better than mere programmers and that Bill Gates, as the metametaprogrammer, was perfect, Microsoft created a system of hero worship that extended Gates’s will into every aspect of the lives of employees he had not even met." - Cringley, Accidental Empires

And oh wow, it appears that some large portion (if not all) of the book is available on Cringley's web site: https://www.cringely.com/2013/02/04/accidental-empires-part-...

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