Re: I. M. John W. Backus
From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 01:31:55 GMT
Message-ID: <f0lMh.13414$PV3.138621_at_ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>
>
> Doesn't matter, but I didn't even know he was the Fortran guy. Freely
> admit I was never any good at Fortran. That's not because I was smart
> rather that I didn't know anything (lucky me) at the time. Don't know
> when BNF came out and even though I'm both an accused and admitted
> language philistine, I welcomed the precision.
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 01:31:55 GMT
Message-ID: <f0lMh.13414$PV3.138621_at_ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>
paul c wrote:
>> paul c wrote: >> >>> mAsterdam wrote: >>> >>>> mAsterdam wrote: >>>> >>>>> Marshall wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> ...when did formal methods for describing programming languages >>>>>> really get started? >>>> >>>>> Wikipedia mentions 1956 ( >>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy ) >>>>> - and 1959 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus-Naur_form ) ... >>>> >>>> Sadly, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/business/20backus.html >>> >>> No idea how big what he did will turn out to be, but comparing it to >>> the IT mumbo-jumbo that increases every day, he should go down as a >>> worthy traveller. >> >> It's odd that the obit got things so wrong. Fortran is a monstrosity >> -- one of those abominable things that was just good enough. It's >> greatest achievement was to show how not to write a compiler. Backus >> more than redeemed himself a few years later by learning from fortran >> how to write a compiler when he and Peter Naur came up with BNF. >> >> Fortran should be a side-note to BNF and not vice versa. >> >> (BNF is a very big contribution--more than enough to share.)
>
> Doesn't matter, but I didn't even know he was the Fortran guy. Freely
> admit I was never any good at Fortran. That's not because I was smart
> rather that I didn't know anything (lucky me) at the time. Don't know
> when BNF came out and even though I'm both an accused and admitted
> language philistine, I welcomed the precision.
They invented the notation so they could formally describe Algol-60. Received on Thu Mar 22 2007 - 02:31:55 CET