Learn the M programming language, and teach it to others. (opens in new tab)

M(umps) is the most vile blot upon the landscape of development tools.

It rots any brain that comes into contact with it and destroys all ambitions.

A hideous fate awaits any that pass that way.

Beware - run away - run away.

Teaching Mumps to others should probably be prosecuted on a range of charges - certainly to inflict this vile heap of crap on anyone in another nation would be counted a war crime.

A great little book that covers some of the history involved is Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Healthcare Is Better Than Yours by Phillip Longman.

The VistA system used by the VA was developed in bottom-up fashion by doctors and interns, who snuck minicomputers into the hospitals in defiance of the mainframe-based IT staff, which went around removing them. One year IT removed more computers than it installed.

But VistA ended up so well-suited to doctors' needs that it ultimately won. Now it's open source and is the basis for several national healthcare systems.

It's a complete medical records system, makes it easy to get instant lab reports, prevents medication errors, etc. About the only thing it doesn't cover well, for obvious reasons, is dealing with insurance companies.

Great article. I've worked with M for over 2 decades in various healthcare institutions. It's amazing how it has supported multi-user systems from 286's to minicomputers (remember them?) to IBM mainframes to today's servers. In one large company we had the same application running on OpenVMS, Unixware, Linux and Windows. While there are domains in which it is not appropriate, for storing and accessing large amounts of indexed data, it is hard to beat.

And the syntax of the base language does not pose the barrier of entry that some more modern languages might.

Steve

The most surprising application I ever saw for MUMPS was the forums for a MUD named MUME I used to play: http://elvenrunes.com/cgi-bin/logs/mumps?rou=stats (the 'Code:' section)