Mumps: Difference between revisions

From OLPC
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Line 8: Line 8:


Mumps is an old language. It was born in the days when a 16-bit address space was the state of the art in minicomputers. It shows its age. I has been called obsolete, ugly, ... It is not a fashionable language.
Mumps is an old language. It was born in the days when a 16-bit address space was the state of the art in minicomputers. It shows its age. I has been called obsolete, ugly, ... It is not a fashionable language.

Most folks don't get past a negative initial impression and appreciate its strengths. The sample code at the bottom of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS Mumps] Wikipedia article is pretty scary!


{{TOCright}}
{{TOCright}}

Revision as of 19:52, 16 February 2008

  This page is part of the OLPC Health Project. Hardware | Software | Content | Health Jam
XO Caudecus

WorldVistA project. Porting VistA to the OLPC.

Mumps

Mumps is a programming language used primarily in medical and financial information systems.

The back server for VistA the medical information system is written in Mumps.

Mumps is an old language. It was born in the days when a 16-bit address space was the state of the art in minicomputers. It shows its age. I has been called obsolete, ugly, ... It is not a fashionable language.

Strengths

  • Speed
  • Compact data structures in storage
    • If you have less data to move it's faster
  • Tom Munnecke's Semantic Network model of data storage

NEED to get larry to tell about performance processing log files and extracting information.

No Young Blood

Mumps programmers are mostly old and gray haired, retiring and becoming a scarce resource.

The Vista Expertise Network is teaching Mumps and beginning a mentorship program pairing new Mumps programmers with retired Mumps experts.

GT.M

For the OLPC WorldVistA project we are using the open source GT.M Mumps compiler.