What (almost) every healthcare IT Analyst Should Know About MUMPS Programming

I’ve found that different software vendors require different levels of customization.  Some make their money more on charging for customizations than for regular support.  Others are the other way around.  Regardless, I think it helps a lot to learn how to customize the software you support by learning the programming language it is written in.

In my case, I happened to learn MUMPS back in 1997.  If you were alive at that time, you may recall that this was during the .com bubble and I happened to be in Silicon Valley!

Well, I had just gotten married and had just gotten my bachelor’s degree.  That meant that I had a lot of pressure to find a decent paying job fast.  My wife was supporting us and I felt really embarrassed that she had to do that.

So, one of the hospitals in Silicon Valley hired me.  I think they had a hard time finding someone to do healthcare IT when there were all these .com jobs around.

Anyway, I was happy to take their offer to learn MUMPS and finally be able to support the family.  Since then, knowing MUMPS has helped me multiple times because it turned out that some of the biggest players in healthcare IT wrote their software in MUMPS.  I’m pretty sure the last 6 job offers I got were all heavily influenced by my MUMPS programming skills.

So, here are a few things that you can learn about MUMPS that will help you A LOT in at least reading the code.

1) Learn how to read comments in MUMPS.  Anything after a “;” on a line is a comment.

2) “s” means SET, so learn how this command works.  It is just to set a variable to a value.

3) “q” means QUIT, it stops execution at that level and pops you to the next level up or out of the routine.

Start with that.  Let me know if you want a few more of the most common commands in MUMPS.

If you’re interested in learning more, a good place to start is this Intersystems’ tutorial.  This actually teaches you ObjectScript, which is a slightly different than MUMPS, but I understand some of the major software vendors are heading this direction.  So, its probably a good idea to learn this.

If you already program in MUMPS, what are some other common MUMPS commands?  Please share in the comments.

If you don’t program in MUMPS, what are you greatest fears in learning MUMPS?  Please share your answers in the comments.

I look forward to hearing from you!

“You’re not the boss of me! Oh wait, actually, you are.”

I’ve found that there is sometimes a strange tension between worker bees and their bosses.  I’m not sure why this is the case, my guess is that this is a very Western phenomenon.  I noticed that when I was in Syria, it wasn’t that way.  Bosses were treated with a lot of respect.

I’ll let the philosophers duke out what is really happening, my point is just to emphasize that you should see your boss as your ally.

The way I approach it is that my boss is the person my organization chose to represent them to me.  So, since I work for this organization, I should do everything in my power to keep my boss happy.

Obviously, you can end up with a difficult boss once in a while, but you have the option to find a new position on a different team/department/organization.

I’ve found that if you make sure you take care of your boss, your boss will take care of you.

Let me know what you think. 🙂