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Real Programmer

   Eat Quiche"] n. A particular sub-variety of hacker: one possessed
   of a flippant attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even when
   justified by experience.  The archetypal `Real Programmer' likes
   to program on the bare metal and is very good at same,
   remembers the binary opcodes for every machine he has ever
   programmed, thinks that HLLs are sissy, and uses a debugger to 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 documentation: "If it was
   hard to write", says the Real 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 appalls.  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 Programmer, see "The Story
   of Mel, a Real Programmer" in Appendix A.  The term itself
   was popularized by a 1983 Datamation article "Real
   Programmers Don't Use Pascal" by Ed Post, still circulating on
   USENET and Internet in on-line form.