{"id":58532,"date":"2022-05-22T09:02:13","date_gmt":"2022-05-22T13:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pappp.net\/?guid=7eda6226479f7f8a6cee0f8f650710f5"},"modified":"2022-05-22T09:02:13","modified_gmt":"2022-05-22T13:02:13","slug":"mels-loop-a-comprenesive-companion-to-the-story-of-mel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/?p=58532","title":{"rendered":"Mel\u2019s Loop \u2013 A Comprenesive Companion to the Story of Mel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: adafruit industries blog<\/a><\/p>\n

Article note: I'm pretty well-versed in computer history and _The Story of Mel_ is still a little tricky to contextualize, seeing it annotated like a piece of challenging historical literature is nifty.<\/div>

Many years ago (not 39 years ago, though possibly 19) I remember reading The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer. Already, a lot had to be explained to a programmer of the day. But now there’s Mel’s Loop<\/a>, an annotated version with a page of resources for additional background. According to the author<\/a>,<\/p>

\n

Today we celebrate the 39th anniversary of the first publication of The Story of Mel by Ed Nather<\/strong>. The Story of Mel<\/em> was written as a memoir about the era of early computing of the late 1950s, creating a fresh memory of the days when Hackership was first forged. It continued to live through the years as an epic hacker folklore.<\/p>\n

Little is known about the origins of The Story of Mel,<\/em> its characters, and technical aspects. Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time researching the story. As I interviewed people who were related to it, I discovered some interesting details about the life and origins of Mel, Ed, and their stories, as well as the company where it all happened, and developed a deep perspective of Mel’s famous hack.<\/p>\n

To celebrate this research, we launch today a new project: Mel’s Loop<\/strong>, which includes an annotated version of the story, along with articles and other materials that are soon to be added to this web companion – related to The Story of Mel<\/em>, and to the Hacker Folklore genre in general.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>

And here’s the opening of The Story of Mel<\/em> itself:<\/p>

\n

A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming made the bold and unvarnished statement:<\/p>\n

Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.<\/p>\n

Maybe they do now, in this decadent era of Lite beer, hand calculators, and “user-friendly” software…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>

Check out Mel’s Loop<\/a>!<\/p>

<\/div>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many years ago (not 39 years ago, though possibly 19) I remember reading The Story of Mel, a Real Pr…<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}