"Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" is an essay about computer programming

Computer programming

Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...

 written by Ed Post of Tektronix, Inc., and published in July 1983 as a letter to the editor

Letter to the editor

A letter to the editor is a letter sent to a publication about issues of concern from its readers. Usually, letters are intended for publication...

 in Datamation

Datamation

Datamation was a print computer magazine published in the United States between 1957 and 1998. When first published it wasn't clear there would be a significant market for a computer magazine given how few computers there were...

.

Widely circulated on Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 in its day, and well-known in the computer software industry the article compares and contrasts real programmers, who use punch cards and write programs in FORTRAN

Fortran

Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...

 or assembly language

Assembly language

An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other programmable devices. It implements a symbolic representation of the machine codes and other constants needed to program a given CPU architecture...

, with modern-day "quiche eaters" who use programming languages such as Pascal

Pascal (programming language)

Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...

 which support structured programming

Structured programming

Structured programming is a programming paradigm aimed on improving the clarity, quality, and development time of a computer program by making extensive use of subroutines, block structures and for and while loops - in contrast to using simple tests and jumps such as the goto statement which could...

 and impose restrictions meant to prevent or minimize common bug

Software bug

A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...

s due to inadvertent programming logic errors. Also mentioned are feats such as the inventor of the Cray-1

Cray-1

The Cray-1 was a supercomputer designed, manufactured, and marketed by Cray Research. The first Cray-1 system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976, and it went on to become one of the best known and most successful supercomputers in history...

 supercomputer toggling in the first operating system for the CDC 7600

CDC 7600

The CDC 7600 was the Seymour Cray-designed successor to the CDC 6600, extending Control Data's dominance of the supercomputer field into the 1970s. The 7600 ran at 36.4 MHz and had a 65 Kword primary memory using core and variable-size secondary memory...

 through the front panel without notes when it was first powered on.

The next year Ed Nather

Ed Nather

R. Edward Nather is a retired UT Austin professor of astronomy. His major academic interests are the asteroseismology of white dwarfs, and observational studies of interacting binary collapsed stars....

’s "The realest programmer of all" USENET

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 posting extended the theme, as have many subsequent articles, cartoons and in-jokes—with the alleged defining features of a "Real Programmer" differing with time and place, in the fashion of the "no true Scotsman

No true Scotsman

No true Scotsman is an informal logical fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to...

" fallacy.

See also

• Real Programmer
  Real programmer
  The term Real Programmer is computer programmers' folklore to describe the archetypical "hardcore" programmer who eschews the modern languages and tools of the day in favour of more direct and efficient solutions – closer to the hardware...
  
  
• The Story of Mel
• Pascal criticism

External links

• Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (full original)