Computing Past: Mel, the Realest Programmer of All

Mel Kaye was the archetypical Real Programmer. During the 1950s-60s he was renowned for his ability to understand underlying systems and write code to take advantage of their quirks. His loop with no exit, exits right on schedule via an awesomely subtle hardware overflow. Mel’s story demonstrates why knowledge of the full stack benefits you as a programmer. In this talk, we’ll hear about his zany exploits, focusing on the lessons we can learn to make ourselves stronger and better developers.