Real Programmer

The term is often used to describe a more bare metal way of doing something - for example: Real Programmers don't use IDEs, they write programs using cat > a.out.

The archetypal Real Programmer is Mel Kaye of the Royal McBee Computer Corporation who is immortalised in the 'The Story of Mel', one of the most famous pieces of hacker folklore. As the story infamously puts it, he wrote in machine code - in 'raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers. Directly.'

The webcomic XKCD takes real programmers to a new level, stating they use butterflies, high atmosphere optics, and cosmic rays to write directly to the hard disk.

See also

• Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal, a 1983 parody of Real Men Don't Eat Quiche exploring the psychology of, and prospects for, the Real Programmer.

References

• 2 from Wikipedia