For the curious, newer versions of MUMPS are still used as the core database framework by a lot of electronic health records companies. Most notably, it’s the backbone of Epic Systems, the largest EHR company in the US.
The MUMPS 76 Primer – anniversary edition
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Re: The MUMPS 76 Primer – anniversary edition
#12Built-in hierarchical DB? Neat!
DB access using same syntax as local variables? Neat!
Datetime epoch in 1841? Ok, sure.
Stringly typed with literally no other types? Uh…
Appendix 7 on this page http://www.faqs.org/faqs/m-technology-faq/part2/ : runs screaming into the night
It had some neat ideas, some alright ideas that were reasonable in the context it was created for, and some absolute nightmare fuel.
Re: The MUMPS 76 Primer – anniversary edition
#13Built-in hierarchical DB? Neat! DB access using same syntax as local variables? Neat! Datetime epoch in 1841? Ok, sure. Stringly typed with literally no other types? Uh… Appendix 7 on this page http://www.faqs.org/faqs/m-technology-faq/part2/ : runs screaming into the night It had some neat ideas, some alright ideas that were reasonable in the context it was created for, and some absolute nightmare fuel.
Already discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707444
Re: The MUMPS 76 Primer – anniversary edition
#14Built-in hierarchical DB? Neat! DB access using same syntax as local variables? Neat! Datetime epoch in 1841? Ok, sure. Stringly typed with literally no other types? Uh… Appendix 7 on this page http://www.faqs.org/faqs/m-technology-faq/part2/ : runs screaming into the night It had some neat ideas, some alright ideas that were reasonable in the context it was created for, and some absolute nightmare fuel.
Already discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707444
I don’t think that’s the same discussion.
Re: The MUMPS 76 Primer – anniversary edition
#15MUMPS’ bad reputation is totally unearned. Most examples online (the wiki page, the awful Case of the MUMPS article) are examples of MUMPS code from the 60s-70s when storage was a premium and enterprise-size programs had to fit in a handful of megabytes, so there was no room for readability.
MUMPS code is more readable than most languages, it’s very simple and procedural. And the ability to interact directly with durable data the same as you do local data is very nice. I don’t know why no modern languages try to do something similar.
Re: The MUMPS 76 Primer – anniversary edition
#16obligatory reference: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/a_case_of_the_mumps
This article is terrible and I hate that people always bring it up whenever MUMPS is mentioned here.
MUMPS is easy to read, understand and maintain when written well.
These examples (and the Wikipedia ones) are from code written when hospitals needed to run their whole EMR with extreme storage constraints, so more terse code was necessary to fit more on the disk. Of course they aren’t readable by modern standards.
Re: The MUMPS 76 Primer – anniversary edition
#17I did most of Advent of Code last year code golfing in MUMPS (running on Caché), with the additional challenge on up to and including day 7 doing without literals - that's to say no numbers and no strings. It was good fun - https://github.com/dominique-m-aoc/aoc-2025/blob/main/day03p... for day three part 1 for example. Or day 7 part 2 where the alphanumeric chars spell a story with only two nonsense words, with almo…
How do you think your code would do in GT.M or Yottadb? I understand both are open source (vs Cache).
Re: The MUMPS 76 Primer – anniversary edition
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think anyone is really blaming MUMPS for the limitations it had to work with 1970s tech. The story was more about how terrible it is to work with in the 2000s and the surprising fact that it's still in use today in certain niches.
My project and the referenced primer are about the 1976 standard. But many MUMPS based systems are still in operation and maintenance today; and not many significant systems in IT reach a 50 year lifetime. A modern JavaScript, PHP or Python system (languages with similar limitations for large-scale software engineering as MUMPS) written five years ago hardly works today because dependencies significantly changed or a…
What about running that same codebase on open source versions of mumps such as GT.M or Yottadb?
Re: The MUMPS 76 Primer – anniversary edition
#19It’s always useful to look at prior art and review capabilities we might have missed. Innovation can happen by mixing the “good parts” of different old ideas.
Re: The MUMPS 76 Primer – anniversary edition
#20Did they really have to use KILL as the word to delete a variable? Especially as it's used in hospitals? KILL patient....?