A Case Of The Mumps

I’ve been a developer since the late 1970′s and still going strong.  Over the years I’ve had to learn and develop using most of the well-known computer languages and one of the least-known.  I’ve had to understand a large number well enough to code-generate them.  Most I learned to hate.  Most were too cumbersome, tedious, boring, sucking the interest out of the task of application development or just wasting my time in a mass of redundant syntax and detail.

In all that time, just two languages have come my way where I’ve thought: “yes, this is cool; this is fun; this makes me really productive”.  One you’ll know: Javascript.  The other you’ll have either not heard of, or if you have, you’re probably now thinking I must be seriously deluded: it’s known as the Mumps language.

Actually there’s a very good reason why I clicked with both: they share a number of key attributes...