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> OPERATORS: No precedence, executed left to right, parenthesize as desired. 2+3*10 yields 50. How do you even come up with this?
I learned MUMPS years ago at UC Davis (Dick Walters, one of the language maintainers, was tenured there) and I found it a really interesting, but deeply weird language. Walters himself was a considerate, patient dude with me, struggling to deal with at the time a truly strange beast.
If anyone remembers, CSIF used NIS (not even NIS+) and all password hashes were available to everyone on any cluster machine by running `getent passwd`. John the Ripper found about 90 short/dictionary-based passwords within one minute on a machine of that era.
Hey there to all the EPIC kids poking their head in this thread. Where did you all end up post-EPIC?
Epic had some nice features and it was really cool working directly with nurses and doctors. But it has some churn issues and the software sucks to use, especially with Epic's insistence on "all software built in house". While a good marketing ploy, it results in reinventing crappier wheels.
> OPERATORS: No precedence, executed left to right, parenthesize as desired. 2+3*10 yields 50. How do you even come up with this?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I love paying it with worse health services though. My city has sunk almost a billion dollars into a dysfunctional Epic pile of MUMPS. But I guess it's nice to see the healthcare software disgrace works well at least for some.
I primarily work on clinical data, and from that side, the technology stack—MUMPS included—has its quirks but generally gets the job done. The real dysfunction in U.S. healthcare isn’t the software or the language itself, but the system it’s built to serve. The core issues lie in the incentives around revenue cycle management and the structure of the insurance industry. Blaming MUMPS is like blaming COBOL for bank fe…
But MUMPS is indeed more a symptom of a rotten industry. E.g. the bidding process that led to this mess was very corrupt, from all sides.
Part-time MUMPS programmer here for a health system in NYC. I still love writing in it. The rates are way better than other eco-systems (e.g. Python, Java, blah blah) , probably because the eco-system isn't diluted with low-wage workers from India/China. This is because 95%+ of Epic/Ex-Epic employees are American. I would even argue it is the patriotic language of choice due to that reason. Expected pay of 85-120/hou…
>probably because the eco-system isn't diluted with low-wage workers from India/China.
Are there other technologies like MUMPS that have the same characteristics?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's dead-simple to parse? Remember that not all machines back then had hardware call-stacks.
Would reverse Polish notation be just as easy to parse and interpret?
Part-time MUMPS programmer here for a health system in NYC. I still love writing in it. The rates are way better than other eco-systems (e.g. Python, Java, blah blah) , probably because the eco-system isn't diluted with low-wage workers from India/China. This is because 95%+ of Epic/Ex-Epic employees are American. I would even argue it is the patriotic language of choice due to that reason. Expected pay of 85-120/hou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I love paying it with worse health services though. My city has sunk almost a billion dollars into a dysfunctional Epic pile of MUMPS. But I guess it's nice to see the healthcare software disgrace works well at least for some.
> My city has sunk almost a billion dollars into a dysfunctional Epic pile of MUMPS. I don’t know if the alternatives - e.g. Oracle Health/Cerner - are really that much better - and if Epic is as bad as you say, I suspect that says more about their corporate culture than choice of programming language
In reality it's not a dilemma. In other cities and countries there are EHR systems from other vendors that work less bad and with lower cost.