Mel Kaye
Encyclopedia
The Story of Mel is an archetypical piece of computer programming
folklore. Its subject, Mel Kaye, is the canonical Real Programmer
.
’s The Story of Mel details the extraordinary programming prowess of a former collegue of his, "Mel", at Royal McBee Computer Corporation
. Although originally written in prose, Nather’s story was modified by someone into a "free verse" form which has become widespread.
Little is known about Mel Kaye, beyond the fact that he was credited with doing the "bulk of the programming" on the 1959 ACT-1 compiler for the Royal McBee LGP-30
computer In Nather's story, Kaye is portrayed as being prone to avoiding optimizing assemblers
in favor of crafting code to take advantage of hardware quirks, for example taking advantage of the rotation of the LGP-30
's drum memory
to avoid writing delay loops into the code.
The story as written by Nather involved Kaye's work on rewriting a blackjack
program from the LGP-30 to a newer Royal McBee system, the RPC-4000; company sales executives had requested the installation of a cheat code allowing the customers to always win the game, a request that Kaye reluctantly acceded to, but to his own delight, he accidentally changed the odds in favor of the dealer rather than the player.
Subsequent to Kaye's departure, Nather was asked to fix the bug. While examining the code, he found out that an apparent infinite loop
had in fact been coded in such a way as to take advantage of a carry-overflow error, causing the loop to change itself into a jump instruction to the next part of the code. This impressed Nather so much that, out of respect, he gave up the task and reported that he could not find the bug.
The essay was originally published in the usenet
news group "net.jokes" on May 21, 1983 by utastro!nather (the email address of Ed Nather at the time).
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...
folklore. Its subject, Mel Kaye, is the canonical 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...
.
Story
Ed NatherEd 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 Story of Mel details the extraordinary programming prowess of a former collegue of his, "Mel", at Royal McBee Computer Corporation
Royal McBee
Royal McBee was the name of the computer manufacturing and retail division of Royal Typewriter which made the early computers RPC 4000 and RPC 9000...
. Although originally written in prose, Nather’s story was modified by someone into a "free verse" form which has become widespread.
Little is known about Mel Kaye, beyond the fact that he was credited with doing the "bulk of the programming" on the 1959 ACT-1 compiler for the Royal McBee LGP-30
LGP-30
The LGP-30, standing for Librascope General Purpose and then Librascope General Precision, was an early off-the-shelf computer. It was manufactured by the Librascope company of Glendale, California , and sold and serviced by the Royal Precision Electronic Computer Company, a joint venture with the...
computer In Nather's story, Kaye is portrayed as being prone to avoiding optimizing assemblers
Optimization (computer science)
In computer science, program optimization or software optimization is the process of modifying a software system to make some aspect of it work more efficiently or use fewer resources...
in favor of crafting code to take advantage of hardware quirks, for example taking advantage of the rotation of the LGP-30
LGP-30
The LGP-30, standing for Librascope General Purpose and then Librascope General Precision, was an early off-the-shelf computer. It was manufactured by the Librascope company of Glendale, California , and sold and serviced by the Royal Precision Electronic Computer Company, a joint venture with the...
's drum memory
Drum memory
Drum memory is a magnetic data storage device and was an early form of computer memory widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s, invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria....
to avoid writing delay loops into the code.
The story as written by Nather involved Kaye's work on rewriting a blackjack
Blackjack
Blackjack, also known as Twenty-one or Vingt-et-un , is the most widely played casino banking game in the world...
program from the LGP-30 to a newer Royal McBee system, the RPC-4000; company sales executives had requested the installation of a cheat code allowing the customers to always win the game, a request that Kaye reluctantly acceded to, but to his own delight, he accidentally changed the odds in favor of the dealer rather than the player.
Subsequent to Kaye's departure, Nather was asked to fix the bug. While examining the code, he found out that an apparent infinite loop
Infinite loop
An infinite loop is a sequence of instructions in a computer program which loops endlessly, either due to the loop having no terminating condition, having one that can never be met, or one that causes the loop to start over...
had in fact been coded in such a way as to take advantage of a carry-overflow error, causing the loop to change itself into a jump instruction to the next part of the code. This impressed Nather so much that, out of respect, he gave up the task and reported that he could not find the bug.
The essay was originally published in the 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...
news group "net.jokes" on May 21, 1983 by utastro!nather (the email address of Ed Nather at the time).
Further reading
- The Story of Mel a copy of the original prose version
- The Story Of Mel prose from FOLDOCFree On-line Dictionary of ComputingThe Free On-line Dictionary of Computing is an online, searchable, encyclopedic dictionary of computing subjects. It was founded in 1985 by Denis Howe and is hosted by Imperial College London...
, with added/corrected punctuation for readability - Mel Kaye’s signature on a coding sheet for the LGP-30.
- A description written by Mel Kaye of a blackjack game, presumably the subject of the original story.