* [TUHS] In memoriam: John Backus
@ 2019-03-17 1:02 Dave Horsfall
2019-03-17 1:05 ` Larry McVoy
0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2019-03-17 1:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society
We lost computer pioneer John Backus on this day in 2007; amongst other things
he gave us FORTRAN (yuck!) and BNF, which is ironic, really, because FORTRAN
has no syntax to speak of.
-- Dave
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In memoriam: John Backus
2019-03-17 1:02 [TUHS] In memoriam: John Backus Dave Horsfall
@ 2019-03-17 1:05 ` Larry McVoy
2019-03-17 2:16 ` Bakul Shah
0 siblings, 1 reply; 3+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2019-03-17 1:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society
Fortran is sort of yucky but as Clem has said, it continues to pay the bills.
That's some staying power.
I am with you that it is ironic that he gave us BNF as well. One wonders
if he did that as a result of doing Fortran.
On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 12:02:39PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> We lost computer pioneer John Backus on this day in 2007; amongst other
> things he gave us FORTRAN (yuck!) and BNF, which is ironic, really, because
> FORTRAN has no syntax to speak of.
>
> -- Dave
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] In memoriam: John Backus
2019-03-17 1:05 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2019-03-17 2:16 ` Bakul Shah
0 siblings, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2019-03-17 2:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society
On Sat, 16 Mar 2019 18:05:52 -0700 Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> Fortran is sort of yucky but as Clem has said, it continues to pay the bills.
> That's some staying power.
>
> I am with you that it is ironic that he gave us BNF as well. One wonders
> if he did that as a result of doing Fortran.
He did FP as a result of doing Fortran. In an interview by
Grady Booch he says
Well, it was just trying to be at a higher level so that
you didn't have to get into all those gory details and
stuff. Basically, the idea was to try to describe the
transformation that you wanted to take place, rather than
how to do it. It evolved very slowly and peculiarly.
But he said ultimately his effort failed because he couldn't see
how to deal with real time. Something he worked on for years.
> On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 12:02:39PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> > We lost computer pioneer John Backus on this day in 2007; amongst other
> > things he gave us FORTRAN (yuck!) and BNF, which is ironic, really, because
> > FORTRAN has no syntax to speak of.
> >
> > -- Dave
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 3+ messages in thread
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