The story
The idiom derives from the book on stereotypes about masculinity, Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, by Bruce Feirstein, published in 1982. The computer circle version was popularised by a 1983 article Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal, that specifically accuses the creator of the Pascal language, Niklaus Wirth, of being a "quiche eater" due to the nature of Pascal.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.