"Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal"[1] (a parody of the bestselling 1982 tongue-in-cheek book on stereotypes about masculinity Real Men Don't Eat Quiche) is an essay about computer programming written by Ed Post of Tektronix, Inc.,[2] and published in July 1983 as a reader's contribution in Datamation.
Also mentioned are feats such as Seymour Cray, the inventor of the Cray-1 supercomputer, using manual control switches to load the first operating system for the CDC 7600 without notes.
The next year Ed Nather’s The Story of Mel, also known as The realest programmer of all, extended the theme.
As the story famously puts it, "He wrote in machine code—in 'raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
[4] The term is used in many subsequent articles,[5][6][7] webcomics[8] and in-jokes—although the alleged defining features of a "Real Programmer" differ with time and place.