Moment of Silence for John Backus

Post Reply New Topic

John Backus was the "father of FORTRAN", the first mainstream programming language in the good old mainframe, keypunch/cardreader days.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20070321/bs_nf/50908

I guess I only knew of him as in the Backus-Naur form. A trivial idea almost, but the best ones always are, after someone else has had them.

He got his masters degree when I was two years old. I didn't realise he was that old.

Strangely, I put up two pictures of punched cards here, on Saturday, the day he died.