Acorn RISC PD-CD 1/Acorn RISC PD-CD 1.iso/sillies/_docs/realprog

Text File | 1992-05-04 | 24.1 KB | 535 lines

             Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL


     Back in the good old days -- the "Golden Era"  of  com-
puters, it was easy to separate the men from the boys (some-
times called "Real Men" and "Quiche Eaters" in  the  litera-
ture).  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 pre-
vious 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).

     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 either call me by name, pronouncing it 'Veert', or
call me 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 IBM370 FORTRAN-G
and H compilers.  Real  programmers  don't  need  all  these
abstract  concepts  to  get their jobs done -- they are per-
fectly 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 Accounting     (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 language, it isn't worth
doing.

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 tech-
niques. 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 exam-
ple 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 Pro-
grammers 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  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 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.

OPERATING SYSTEMS
=================

     What kind of operating system is used by  a  Real  Pro-
grammer?   CPM? God forbid -- CPM, after all, is basically a
toy operating system.  Even  little  old  ladies  and  grade
school students can understand and use CPM.

     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 OS370. 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 out-
standing programmer can find bugs buried  in  a  6  megabyte
core  dump  without using a hex calculator. (I have actually
seen this done.)

     OS is a truly remarkable operating system. It's  possi-
ble  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 Time Sharing  system  that  runs  on
OS370, but after careful study I have come to the conclusion
that they were mistaken.


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 when-
ever 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.  Sey-
mour, needless to say, is a Real Programmer.

     One of my favorite Real Programmers was a systems  pro-
grammer  for  Texas  Instruments. One day he got a long dis-
tance call from a user whose system had crashed in the  mid-
dle  of  saving  some important work. Jim was able to repair
the damage over the phone, getting the  user  to  toggle  in
disk  IO  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 usu-
ally 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 pre-
cise.

     It has been observed that a TECO command sequence  more
closely resembles 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.

     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].

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  Pro-
grammer    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 pho-
tographed 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 Depart-
ment. 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 Depart-
ment  decided that all Defense programs should be written in
some grand unified language called ADA  ((C),  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 incred-
ibly complex, includes methods for messing with the  operat-
ing  system  and  rearranging  memory,  and  Edsger 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 Pro-
grammer 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 Program-
mer  knows  how to beat the machine every time: no challenge
in that.) Everyone working at LucasFilm is a  Real  Program-
mer. (It would be crazy to turn down the money of fifty mil-
lion 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.

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 opin-
ion 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  11 by 14 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  scanner  himself,  because  he  never could
       trust  keypunch operators  to get it right  the first
       time.


THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITAT
=====================================

     What sort of environment does the Real Programmer func-
tion 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  com-
puter  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 line-printer Snoopy calendar for
     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-stuff 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 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  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]

  +    A Real Programmer might or might not know his  wife's
       name.  He does,  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.


THE FUTURE
==========

     What of the future? It is a matter of some  concern  to
Real Programmers that the latest generation of computer pro-
grammers are not being brought up with the same  outlook  on
life  as  their  elders. Many of them have never seen a com-
puter with a front  panel.  Hardly  anyone  graduating  from
school  these  days can do hex arithmetic without a calcula-
tor. College graduates these days are soft -- protected from
the realities of programming by source level debuggers, text
editors that count parentheses, and "user friendly"  operat-
ing  systems.  Worst of all, some of these alleged "computer
scientists" manage to get degrees without ever learning FOR-
TRAN!  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 OS370 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.

     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  dif-
ferent  and  subtly  incompatible user interfaces, an arcane
and complicated teletype  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  types  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 Prob-
lem, saving the documentation for later. Long live FORTRAN!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
===============

     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 atd!avsdS:mark for the initial inspiration.

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,
      MITLCSTM-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