I know that I’ve written about this before but The Story of Mel is a classic piece of programming lore that all programmers in my cohort knew. I’m not sure if younger programmers know it so if you’re unfamiliar with the story, take a couple of minutes to read it; it’s not long.
No realistic person would take the story as anything but a parable but the odd thing is that it turns out to be true. Not just sort of true but true. Not only did Mel exist but he did all the things in that story.
The thing I love about the story is that every time I start feeling sorry for myself about how hard my programming work is, I remember Mel and what it was like for him. Imagine having to calculate where to put the next instruction so that it will be under the drum read head when it’s time to execute it. That was literally what Mel was doing.
This a great story and one that I didn’t think was true for a long time. It was only a couple of years ago that I found out that, in fact, Mel really did exist and that the Story of Mel was true. The Jargon File calls the story of Mel one of hackerdom’s great heroic epics. If you haven’t read it or haven’t read it lately, take a look.