About

Mel's Loop is a comprehensive guide and guide for The Story of Mel, an epic Hacker Folklore tale that was written and published by its author, Ed Nather, on the Usenet in 1983. The story describes an exemplary "Real Programmer" by the name of Mel Kaye and his subtle techniques fascinate his colleagues. The story is one of the earliest documentations of The Hacker Spirit, and the themes in the story are still valid to this day.

In Mel's Loop we will also collect a lot of sub-stories around The Story of Mel, its author, Ed Nather, and Mel Kaye himself. This is an historical (or rather an e-archeological) ongoing research into the world of Ed, Mel, their families and life stories, first generation computing and the birth of digital culture, hacker lore and more.

Alongside The Story of Mel, Mel's Loop project is designed as an anthology for other stories, poems and relics in the Hacker Folklore genre. We acknowledge the aesthetic and literary value of such stories, and we aim at providing them with quality translations.

First example would be the Hebrew translation for The Story of Mel (probably the first non-english version of the story in the world) which was published in the literary periodical Dehak (2021), and is presented here in its full annotated version.

We'd like to thank Lara Nather, daughter of Ed Nather, Carl Sorensen from Librascope, Anthony Cuozzo and Assaf Lichtash for contributing their time and knowledge to help us get the stories behind The Story of Mel and eventually achieving a full translation, and gain information about the events, atmospheres and under-currents of this epic.