{"id":8881,"date":"2023-06-19T17:07:35","date_gmt":"2023-06-20T00:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=8881"},"modified":"2023-06-19T17:12:19","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T00:12:19","slug":"the-story-of-mel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=8881","title":{"rendered":"The Story of Mel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Are you a programmer&#8217;s programmer? A man among men? Have people <a href=\"https:\/\/users.cs.utah.edu\/~elb\/folklore\/mel.html\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/users.cs.utah.edu\/~elb\/folklore\/mel.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">written epic poems about your coding<\/a>? If not, maybe you should be as cool as &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Story_of_Mel\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Story_of_Mel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Story of Mel<\/a>&#8216;.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"626\" height=\"528\" data-attachment-id=\"8882\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?attachment_id=8882\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2023\/06\/2020-01-05-the-story-of-mel.png?fit=626%2C528&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"626,528\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"2020-01-05-the-story-of-mel\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2023\/06\/2020-01-05-the-story-of-mel.png?fit=626%2C528&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2023\/06\/2020-01-05-the-story-of-mel.png?resize=626%2C528&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8882\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2023\/06\/2020-01-05-the-story-of-mel.png?w=626&amp;ssl=1 626w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2023\/06\/2020-01-05-the-story-of-mel.png?resize=300%2C253&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattfife.com\/wp-content\/themes\/mattTheme\/headerimgs\/2023\/06\/2020-01-05-the-story-of-mel.png?resize=320%2C270&amp;ssl=1 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 626px) 100vw, 626px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Story_of_Mel\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Story_of_Mel\" target=\"_blank\">The stories of Melvin Kaye<\/a> have become part of programming folklore. Little is actually known of him beyond the fact he did lots of interesting programming with a very early Royal McBee LGP-30. He eschewed optimizing compilers and hand-crafted his code to take advantage of the most esoteric hardware quirks &#8211; such as using the LGP-30&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Drum_memory\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Drum_memory\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">drum memory<\/a> rotation speed to write delay loops in his code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe give one of his be-fabled stories a <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pbm.com\/~lindahl\/mel.html\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"http:\/\/www.pbm.com\/~lindahl\/mel.html\" target=\"_blank\">read<\/a>. Or perhaps one of his <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/quuxplusone.github.io\/blog\/2020\/01\/05\/the-story-of-mel\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/quuxplusone.github.io\/blog\/2020\/01\/05\/the-story-of-mel\/\" target=\"_blank\">other stories.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you a programmer&#8217;s programmer? A man among men? Have people written epic poems about your coding? If not, maybe you should be as cool as &#8216;The Story of Mel&#8216;. The stories of Melvin Kaye have become part of programming folklore. Little is actually known of him beyond the fact he did lots of interesting programming with a very early Royal McBee LGP-30. He eschewed optimizing compilers and hand-crafted his code to take advantage of the most esoteric hardware quirks&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=8881\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-technicalprogramming","category-technical"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-2jf","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8881"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8886,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8881\/revisions\/8886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}