From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: cym224 at gmail.com (Nemo Nusquam) Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2019 14:20:29 -0500 Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, John Backus! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <54dffceb-0a7f-929a-11ec-b775a98f44d4@gmail.com> On 12/03/19 02:55, Dave Horsfall wrote: > As every computer programmer should know, John Backus was emitted in > 1924; he gave us the BNF syntax, but the sod also gave us that FORTRAN > obscenity... A few decades ago, I applied for a job in a place that used VAX FORTRAN and I knew only a bit FORTRAN II. Knowing several imperative languages, I told them that I knew it, bought the book "FORTRAN Tools for VAX/VMS and MS-DOS", and read it in a week, blown away about how far VAX FORTRAN was from FORTRAN II. It was actually quite reasonable. N.