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michaelcampbell
While there are many tales of retro-computing, ROMs to download to play old favorite games, articles about "the good old days", and links to computer history museums, this is by far and away my favorite. And the things mentioned in it predate my career by a good bit. All hail Mel!
ywgdana
I don't think he can be called unsung given the frequency at which his story shows up on sites like hn and reddit...
Kadin
Has anyone ever tried to track down "Mel"? Not that I doubt the veracity of the story, it'd just be interesting to read an interview with the guy, if he's still alive.

I guess if he was programming in the late 50s odds are against him still being around, though.

noamsml
I'm not voting for this only because I've seen it on HN before, but if you haven't, it's a true must-read.
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seanmcq
Title is on the sexist side and exclusive of female programmers. To a female reading this, you would be glamorizing the time when they weren't in this field.

You can glorify past events without being sexist. Try setting up a true scottsman.

rauljara
I agree, but just wanted to say that the title almost certainly isn't intended to denigrate women or imply they can't be awesome programmers. When such and such were men almost always really means when such and such were awesome. The sexism comes from awesome being equivalent to manly, and fact that not even an ounce of consideration is given to the possibility of non-manly awesomeness. It's not that the author is consciously thinking that women couldn't ever be awesome programmers. The question simply doesn't enter into his mind.
ionfish
It's not merely sexist, it's misleading. When the LGP-30 was in use in the late '50s (the RPC 4000 was introduced in 1960), the proportion of women in the field was higher than it is today. When "programmers were men", more of them were women.

References (secondary sources only, sorry):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing

http://knol.google.com/k/the-decline-of-women-in-computer-sc...

lutorm
I was going to make exactly this point. Computer science is the only field I know of that has actually increased its male dominance over time.
gn
I second that, for what it's worth. Everybody complains about the lack of women in computer science. Every now and then some clumsy dork prances by and runs a batch of softcore porn slides with his Ruby talk so we have someone to use as a scapegoat. Actually, though, it's not really the occasional high-profile fuckup that keeps women out of coding. It's the constant rain of low-profile casual dismissiveness.

I do not join a community that keeps telling me more or less daily people with my chromosomes don't really belong and everything was better when you didn't run into my kind all the time. Even if I knew that very few of them actually dislike me; that even the really boorish ones are mostly just harmless losers trying to hide their insecurity: I just wouldn't feel welcome.

(Edit: typo)

anamax
> To a female reading this, you would be glamorizing the time when they weren't in this field.

Are you one of the offended females or a "white knight"?

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seanmcq
Exactly how is that statement not sexist?
j-g-faustus
>Title is on the sexist side and exclusive of female programmers.

I disagree, "when men were men" has been a mostly ironic expression at least since the 1980s, along the lines of "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" (a 1982 book which listed Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of UK, as an example of a Real Man).

I don't disagree that sexism is an issue in some "hacker" circles, but I have trouble seeing this particular title as anything but perfectly innocent.