"In the beginning, there were Real Programmers"
About this Quote
A little Genesis, a little gatekeeping: “In the beginning, there were Real Programmers” opens like scripture and lands like a smirk. Eric S. Raymond isn’t just reminiscing; he’s mythmaking. By borrowing the cadence of creation stories, he frames a technical subculture as an origin saga, complete with founding heroes and an implied fall from grace. The joke is doing real work.
“Real Programmers” is a deliberately loaded phrase. It doesn’t describe a skill level so much as a temperament: the archetype who knows the machine intimately, ships without fuss, and treats fragility (documentation, hand-holding, sometimes even readability) as a moral weakness. The subtext is a critique of newer, softer, more mediated computing - higher-level languages, GUIs, corporate processes - and a nostalgic defense of a time when constraint forced virtuosity. It’s also a provocation aimed at anyone who’s felt the industry’s insecurity games: if “real” exists, someone’s about to be declared fake.
Context matters: Raymond’s writing often plays in the borderland between folklore and manifesto, where hacker identity becomes politics. The line sets up a parable about authenticity in a field that constantly reinvents itself, then insists each reinvention is progress. The irony is that the myth both mocks and reinforces elitism. It invites readers to laugh at the macho caricature while quietly asking: what did we lose when programming stopped feeling like sorcery and started looking like office work?
“Real Programmers” is a deliberately loaded phrase. It doesn’t describe a skill level so much as a temperament: the archetype who knows the machine intimately, ships without fuss, and treats fragility (documentation, hand-holding, sometimes even readability) as a moral weakness. The subtext is a critique of newer, softer, more mediated computing - higher-level languages, GUIs, corporate processes - and a nostalgic defense of a time when constraint forced virtuosity. It’s also a provocation aimed at anyone who’s felt the industry’s insecurity games: if “real” exists, someone’s about to be declared fake.
Context matters: Raymond’s writing often plays in the borderland between folklore and manifesto, where hacker identity becomes politics. The line sets up a parable about authenticity in a field that constantly reinvents itself, then insists each reinvention is progress. The irony is that the myth both mocks and reinforces elitism. It invites readers to laugh at the macho caricature while quietly asking: what did we lose when programming stopped feeling like sorcery and started looking like office work?
Quote Details
| Topic | Coding & Programming |
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