FORTRAN inventor John Backus dies

Posted By: Wil | Mar 20th, 2007 @ 12:41 PM
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#Mar 20th, 2007 @ 12:41 PM
Wil
Wil
Wil
One of the industry's greats, a man who in fact is largely responsible for there even being an IT industry of the scope and magnitude it now is, has died.  John Backus, who led the 10-person team at IBM that invented the first widely used high-level programming language, FORTRAN, and that developed the compiler that generated amazingly fast executables (by the standards of late 1950s hardware), died on Saturday at the age of 82.  A very interesting obituary about him (especially the description of his professional career, on p. 2) from the NY Times is online here. 

This evening, when you start to write a DO-loop (in whatever language you are using), pause to remember a giant.
#Feb 18th, 2008 @ 7:33 PM
JChung2006
JChung2006
Backus of the Backus Normal Form? Ah, a giant has fallen. Sad
#Feb 18th, 2008 @ 8:25 PM
Sven Groot
Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...
Why was this bumped nearly a year after he died?
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