Re: I. M. John W. Backus
From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:55:00 GMT
Message-ID: <o8uMh.13527$PV3.139689_at_ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>
>
> I seem to remember a quote-oid from Backus along the lines of, "we
> didn't realise we were designing a language - we were building a
> compiler", but I can't remember the exact attribution now.
>
>
>
> I disagree - its greatest achievement was to prove to a lot of people
> that compilers were *possible*. That there was a, to modern eyes,
> unacceptable "bleed" of machine features of the 704 into Fortran's
> design was a consequence of trying to prove the point. Unfortunately,
> the proof of concept was treated as the state of the art by too many
> others for far too long. Hmm, that sounds familiar from somewhere ...
>
> Hrmmmr... BNF came about because Backus and Naur both thought they
> understood a section of one of the original reports on the IAL
> perfectly, but it turned out they had different ideas about what it
> meant. Backus presented Backus "Normal" Form, and he and Naur worked
> on it more to come up with Backus Naur Form.
>
> For me, Backus' real crowning achievement was his 1977 Turing Award
> paper on FP, here - http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
>
> I find myself fairly forgiving of Fortran, because of its
> "originating" status. Was it better than Speedcode or similar
> systems ? Maybe, maybe not - but (much like SQL later) because it came
> from IBM it got traction and proved an important point. (I'm less
> forgiving of C because by that time *they should have known better*.)
>
> These days, BNF seems kind of trivial, and compiler usage is taken as
> a given for the vast majority of cases. It's kind of hard to imagine
> things before either of those cases, but that's where Backus was
> working, and his contributions are immense. And to go from essentially
> bare metal on to FP ...
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:55:00 GMT
Message-ID: <o8uMh.13527$PV3.139689_at_ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>
Tony D wrote:
> On Mar 21, 11:57 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>>It's odd that the obit got things so wrong. Fortran is a monstrosity -- >>one of those abominable things that was just good enough.
>
> I seem to remember a quote-oid from Backus along the lines of, "we
> didn't realise we were designing a language - we were building a
> compiler", but I can't remember the exact attribution now.
>
>
>>It's greatest achievement was to show how not to write a compiler.
>
> I disagree - its greatest achievement was to prove to a lot of people
> that compilers were *possible*. That there was a, to modern eyes,
> unacceptable "bleed" of machine features of the 704 into Fortran's
> design was a consequence of trying to prove the point. Unfortunately,
> the proof of concept was treated as the state of the art by too many
> others for far too long. Hmm, that sounds familiar from somewhere ...
That's exactly my point. Market acceptance of a proof of concept prototype because it is just good enough is a disaster.
>>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.
>
> Hrmmmr... BNF came about because Backus and Naur both thought they
> understood a section of one of the original reports on the IAL
> perfectly, but it turned out they had different ideas about what it
> meant. Backus presented Backus "Normal" Form, and he and Naur worked
> on it more to come up with Backus Naur Form.
>
> For me, Backus' real crowning achievement was his 1977 Turing Award
> paper on FP, here - http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
I know less of his work on functional programming, and that is an area where I need to study more. I certainly agree with the sentiment of that work.
>>Fortran should be a side-note to BNF and not vice versa. >> >>(BNF is a very big contribution--more than enough to share.)
>
> I find myself fairly forgiving of Fortran, because of its
> "originating" status. Was it better than Speedcode or similar
> systems ? Maybe, maybe not - but (much like SQL later) because it came
> from IBM it got traction and proved an important point. (I'm less
> forgiving of C because by that time *they should have known better*.)
>
> These days, BNF seems kind of trivial, and compiler usage is taken as
> a given for the vast majority of cases. It's kind of hard to imagine
> things before either of those cases, but that's where Backus was
> working, and his contributions are immense. And to go from essentially
> bare metal on to FP ...
Hear! Hear! Received on Thu Mar 22 2007 - 12:55:00 CET