Mel the programmer was a real person

Some handwritten code by Mel on this page: <a href="http://www.bemorehealthy.com/LGP-30Computer/The30.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.bemorehealthy.com/LGP-30Computer/The30.htm</a>

That's why when I take on a new web programming project my first action is to order 10,000 NAND gates.

Did anyone actually doubt he was a real person?<p>Still, it's nice to have his full name.

I love that story, always nice to hear a story is real and not just an abstraction for the many 'real programmers' out there. But who are the modern Mel's? <a href="http://www.codemaestro.com/reviews/9" rel="nofollow">http://www.codemaestro.com/reviews/9</a>

The link to Bill von Hagen's corroboration is broken; site search yields the right one: <a href="http://foldoc.org/pub/misc/MelKaye.txt" rel="nofollow">http://foldoc.org/pub/misc/MelKaye.txt</a><p>(whv: thanks also for the gripe@ece.cmu.edu years)

I never did get the concept of "real programmer", I mean when it comes to defining a programmer I would go with wikipedia<p><i>A programmer is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software.</i><p>Now tell me how anyone who does not know how a language or framework works, but can still make computer programs out of it, is not a "real" programmer?