John W. Backus Dies at 82; Developed FORTRAN

A number of readers let us know of the passing of John W. Backus, who assembled a team to develop FORTRAN at IBM in the 1950s. It was the first widely used high-level language. Backus later worked on a "function-level" programming language, FP, which was described in his Turing Award lecture "Can Programming be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" and is viewed as Backus's apology for creating FORTRAN. He received the 1977 ACM Turing Award "for profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on FORTRAN, and for seminal publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages."

Wow.

[Mikachu]

FTA:

His daughter Karen Backus announced the death, saying the family did not know the cause, other than age.

Psh, he developed FORTRAN. I'm surprised he even lived to 82 without being killed by a rabid programmer. ;)

Worst headline ever

[WWWWolf]

John W. Backus Dies at 82; Developed FORTRAN

This has to be the worst Slashdot headline ever. Makes FORTRAN sound like a type of cancer or something. (I thought that stuff was more of COBOL's league.)

Re:Worst headline ever

[Anonymous Coward]

To me, it sounds like he is one of the few actual undead coder zombies out there.

So he developed FORTRAN as he died, huh?

[mushadv]

What does that entail? Did he hemorrhage "WRITE (6,7) 7 FORMAT(12H GOD DAMN IT)" and flatline? What about his death rattle? "STOP END"?

Re:Also known for...

[MichaelSmith]

Truly an American icon. Even if you never ran LEXX or YACC in your life, Backus's impact on contemporary culture cannot be denied.

Many times I have edited lex and yacc code, but never have I understood what the hell I was doing.

The Tombstone

[Nerdfest]

GOTO END or , for those that believe in reincarnation: GOSUB END

It's a hoax

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Nothing on Netcraft yet.

BNF

[mrogers]

Backus is also the B in BNF. Many will mourn his parsing.

Re:Worst headline ever

[JonathanR]

FORTRAN is a cancer. Not yet in remission, either.

obligatory

[marafa]

was he related to A Backus?

Re:Also known for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Push another one onto the stack of computing gods. Someday during the final battle between men and AI we will have to pop that stack. Lets hope it is a long way off. And lets hope that Dijkstra isn't too angry at being close to Backus in the great stack in the sky. The irony of being in a stack with Backus would kill him with its irony if he weren't already dead.

Re:We Stand On The Shoulders of Giants

[aussie_a]

2060s dude, he's a time traveler. Although you don't want to know the cataclysm that forces future programmers to write in FORTRAN *shudder*

Re:What do you know?

[LeninZhiv]

Indeedandhi s i nsight fulidea ofre mov nig thesigni ficanc e o f s p aces be tweenwo rdsw as real lyah eado fits time. :-)

Re:Fond Memories of FORTRAN IV

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes - the cards. And that feeling like you were gambling when you waited to see if the thing ran or not ...

Re:The Tombstone

[Anonymous Coward]

Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.

Re:Also known for...

[hey!]

Many times I have edited lex and yacc code, but never have I understood what the hell I was doing.

Well fear not. I think far fewer programmers today are familiar with BNF than back in the day when anyone who was not utterly worthless had a dog eared copy of The Unix Programming Environment. This means the end of all those tersely documented syntaxes, and with them those cryptic yacc scripts.

Modern system designers have taken a clean sheet approach to the problem of grammar, one which escapes the limits of technology in Backus' generation, when computing power was scarce relative to brain power. Today you are much more likely to be called upon to work with XML schemas, which follows a simple easily understood philosophy: if something is worth saying, then it is worth saying with a lot words.

Re:Wow.

[dr_dank]

I'm even more inclined to thank him for playing both Mr. Howell and Mr. Magoo.

Re:Also known for...

[idontgno]

if something is worth saying, then it is worth saying with a lot words.

I like the corollary more: "XML is like violence. If it's not working, you're not using enough of it."