

Real programmers don't use Pascal (1983) - kleiba
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html

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ColinWright
This article, "Real Programmers don't use Pascal", is the article that
prompted the "Story of Mel"

<http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html>

That has a Wikipedia article giving lots of additional information:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel>

It's believed that Mel was a real person, Mel Kay - here's a photo of the
first class of LGB-30 programmers and instructors, including Mel Kaye:

<http://zappa.brainiac.com/MelKaye.png>

Many people prefer the "free verse" version:

<http://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html>

That's the first version I came across when visiting Stanford in 1985. With no
access to printers, and no way to transfer the file, I copied it by hand. I
may still have that copy somewhere, although after 5 jobs and four house moves
it's probably lost forever.

It's been discussed on HN before - here's one link:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678999>

There are 13 submission of Mel on HN so far, including one just 4 days ago:

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%2...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28story+of+mel%29&sortby=create_ts+desc)

