job, humour (From the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche") A
variety of hacker possessed of a flippant attitude toward
complexity that is arrogant even when justified by experience.
The archetypal "Real Programmer" likes to program on the
baremetal and is very good at it, remembers the binary
op codesfor every machine he has ever programmed, thinks that
edit his code because full-screen editors are for wimps. Real
Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been
bummed into a state of
tenseness just short of rupture.
Real Programmers never use
comments or write
Programmer, "it should be hard to understand." Real
Programmers can make machines do things that were never in
their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really happy
unless doing so. A Real Programmer's code can awe with its
fiendish brilliance, even as its crockishness appals.
Real Programmers live on junk food and coffee, hang
line-printer art on their walls, and terrify the crap out of
other programmers - because someday, somebody else might have
to try to understand their code in order to change it. Their
successors generally consider it a
Good Thing that there
aren't many Real Programmers around any more.
For a famous (and somewhat more positive) portrait of a Real
and Internet in on-line form.
(1997-08-29)