I did most of Advent of Code last year code golfing in MUMPS (running on Caché), with the additional challenge on up to and including day 7 doing without literals - that's to say no numbers and no strings. It was good fun - https://github.com/dominique-m-aoc/aoc-2025/blob/main/day03p... for day three part 1 for example. Or day 7 part 2 where the alphanumeric chars spell a story with only two nonsense words, with almost all the chars being on their own: https://github.com/dominique-m-aoc/aoc-2025/blob/main/day07p... It is a neat language but even more so a neat overall system and bag of concepts that I feel annoyed we haven't seen more of...
That's cool; amazing you indeed coded in MUMPS and not in ObjectScript ;-) Caché is (was) a great technology; ironically they tried to look like a relational database in the nineties, and then eventually came the NoSql boom. How did you get to MUMPS?
First job out of university and stuck around with it for the next dozen years, probably longer than sensible... in the context of maintaining a bag of software that got put together in the mid-80s, a substantial module of which continued to enjoy some moderate success to this day.
Also, the marketing term was post-relational if I recall correctly, the funny thing about that being that it was really pre-relational at first. Also, I forgot, it was IRIS this AOC stuff runs on - the $ZV actually needs that "R" in IRIS so it knows what label to jump to... and what file mode to use... it's wonderfully cursed ;P
One thing I miss about Caché/Ensemble/IRIS is the three different paradigms for manipulating the same bits of data - the whole object layer, SQL (with pre-compiled embedded SQL an option), and the raw global access.
I’ve been working on a project to celebrate the anniversary of MUMPS and its first standard.
For those unfamiliar, MUMPS is an imperative language famously born at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1966. Its defining characteristic is that the language and the database are deeply integrated, acting as an early NoSQL database decades before the term existed.
Well, try to run C++, C# or Java on a PDP-7 or PDP-9.
In 1976, the year of the first standard, massive hospitals with thousands of patients run on MUMPS, on PDP machines with 8K to 24K of core memory and concurrent users.
I did most of Advent of Code last year code golfing in MUMPS (running on Caché), with the additional challenge on up to and including day 7 doing without literals - that's to say no numbers and no strings. It was good fun - https://github.com/dominique-m-aoc/aoc-2025/blob/main/day03p... for day three part 1 for example. Or day 7 part 2 where the alphanumeric chars spell a story with only two nonsense words, with almost all the chars being on their own: https://github.com/dominique-m-aoc/aoc-2025/blob/main/day07p... It is a neat language but even more so a neat overall system and bag of concepts that I feel annoyed we haven't seen more of...
That's cool; amazing you indeed coded in MUMPS and not in ObjectScript ;-) Caché is (was) a great technology; ironically they tried to look like a relational database in the nineties, and then eventually came the NoSql boom. How did you get to MUMPS?
First job out of university and stuck around with it for the next dozen years, probably longer than sensible... in the context of maintaining a bag of software that got put together in the mid-80s, a substantial module of which continued to enjoy some moderate success to this day.
Also, the marketing term was post-relational if I recall correctly, the funny thing about that being that it was really pre-relational at first. Also, I forgot, it was IRIS this AOC stuff runs on - the $ZV actually needs that "R" in IRIS so it knows what label to jump to... and what file mode to use... it's wonderfully cursed ;P
That said, it doesn't hold a candle compared to this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4151554/need-mumps-sampl... which is just about the best obscured (or byte-saving rather) MUMPS snippet in existence.
One thing I miss about Caché/Ensemble/IRIS is the three different paradigms for manipulating the same bits of data - the whole object layer, SQL (with pre-compiled embedded SQL an option), and the raw global access.
I’ve been working on a project to celebrate the anniversary of MUMPS and its first standard.
For those unfamiliar, MUMPS is an imperative language famously born at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1966. Its defining characteristic is that the language and the database are deeply integrated, acting as an early NoSQL database decades before the term existed.
See here for more information about the project: https://github.com/rochus-keller/mumps/
There are pre-compiled versions of my MUMPS 76 interpreter in case you want to play with it.
obligatory reference: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/a_case_of_the_mumps
Well, try to run C++, C# or Java on a PDP-7 or PDP-9.
In 1976, the year of the first standard, massive hospitals with thousands of patients run on MUMPS, on PDP machines with 8K to 24K of core memory and concurrent users.