digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies

nytimes.com — John W. Backus assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 20, 2007

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

48 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • Serinox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+38PROGRAM HELLO
    PRINT*, 'Farewell Backus...'
    END
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+27We shouldn't forget eminent guys like this. The experience of the early generations of computer scientists is only becoming more important to digest and understand.
  • TenebrousX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19"Goodbye, World!"
  • euphemizeme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16My computer organization professor held a moment of silence in class today, and then tearfully recounted the time he met Backus in the '70's.

    BNF4life.
  • AnteChronos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16[this post] ::= [farewell-part] ", " [nerd-joke-part] [EOF]
    [farewell-part] ::= [goodbye-part] " John W. Backus"
    [goodbye-part] ::= "farewell" | "godspeed"
    [nerd-joke-part] ::= [BNF-joke] | [Soviet-Russia-joke] | [Recursive-joke]
    [BNF-joke] ::= [this-post]
    [Soviet-Russia-joke] ::= "In Soviet Russia, " [noun] " " [verb] " you!"
    [Recursive-joke] ::= [Recursive-joke]
  • Novagenesis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8RIP John W. Backus

    I never programmed in FORTRAN, but so much of what came after learned from it.
  • quantumHobbit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7It's true. Joke from the 1970's:
    Q: What will the High Performance Computing language of the 1980's be?
    A: I don't know, but it will be called Fortran.
    Seriously that language has been in use longer than anything else. What else has its longevity?
  • Rustbucket, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6And whitespace sensitive languages like Python will live on...
    Heck Fortran is still used heavily today in High Performance Computing.
  • OldSchoolNinja, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6*moment of silence*
  • SteveMax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6On most high-end supercomputers used for research, you have only Fortran and C compilers. The C ones are usually just thrown there, and the Fortran ones are really, really optimised. Even poor ol' g77 produces some very fast executables, if your code is basically FP operations.
    Fortran is used by inertia, yes; but also because of the wonderful compilers that make it fast where it needs to be: FP.
  • gameforge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Digg really needs your input on computer science! And fish really need hair dryers! John Backus could program his foot up your ass in pure Fortran. I know it sucks being 10 (yep, I read some of your other comments) but don't take it out on Digg, please.
  • trollick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5A good FORTRAN programmer can write FORTRAN code in any language
  • betona, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Wow, I never knew. The first language I ever learned (1977) was FORTRAN on a Cromemco minicomputer. Later on in college I wrote FORTRAN on punch cards. Those were the days, when men were men, code was hard and screens were green (if you even had a screen)...
  • gguldens, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Never met Backus, but did have the honor of listening to, and meeting Capt. Grace Hopper, the mother of COBOL, at one point in my career. I have made it a point to study, and learn from, the experiences of people such as Backus, Hopper, and John Postel from the IETF. These trail blazers, along with many more whom I haven't mentioned, created the very foundations upon which all our IT infrastructure is based. These people should be the heroes and mentors of everyone in the world of information technology.
  • d3dm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That was Jim Backus, you maroon!

    http://www.mises.org/images3/TH3.gif

  • NeoCortex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The real reason FORTRAN has lasted this long is simply because so much was already written in it. I'm a physics PhD student, and many of my coleagues can't stand FORTRAN, yet they still use it for their research work. The reason they give is that all of their existing programs from the older professors is in FORTRAN and it would simply be too much work to re-write everything in a modern language to be worth the effort. Since the old-guard is unwilling to let the language die, many of the younger scientists and engineers are being force-fed it to keep it alive.

    While I respect everything that FORTRAN has contributed to programming languages in the past, there are significantly better alternatives for anything that someone would use it for.
  • m1th, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3So true...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus-Naur_form
  • AnteChronos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Gah! Digg ate my angle brackets, which somehow prevented me from editing the post, as well. *sigh* I'll try again.
  • gameforge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5@aliengoods
    Why would you want Bill Gates to die? I hate MS as much as (me?), but Bill Gates (and Paul Allen although he wasn't on your list) are cool. They're not perfect, but they're both huge philanthropists, and that makes up for an awful lot of ***** in my book. They're also immensely intelligent, and have (relatively) little to do with MS right now.

    While I don't wish death on anyone, Darl McDoodyhead and Steve Ballmer would have been more understandable...
  • Zera, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Today is the only day I can remember being proud to have learned Fortran.

    I was forced to take it by a tiny garbage college in 2000, using a textbook copyright in 1977 :o, and I have never used Fortran outside of that class, but it is a kind of neat feather in one's cap I suppose.
  • neuralcooker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2“You need the willingness to fail all the time,” [Bachus] said. “You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.”
  • gameforge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm. Sounds like we need a new language called FWEB. While whatever is holding back scientists today with FORTRAN might still apply, FWEB would be a good upgrade.

    No, I'm not (just) being a dumbass - WEB was a language that Donald E. Knuth designed so he could write TeX. It generated compilable Pascal, but is far easier to maintain and read because of the (still) state-of-the-art documentation system. A later iteration called CWEB (which Knuth also worked on and still uses) used C instead of Pascal. It is, in fact, DEK's favorite language (which says a lot).

    I would imagine porting existing FORTRAN code with a future FWEB specification would be maybe a little more difficult than getting a C program to run in a C++ environment... if that says anything.

    http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/cweb.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming - WEB was the first "literate" programming language
  • yournamehere, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2one more into the bit bucket
  • Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I think it's less a testament to the power of FORTRAN and more to the inertia of human laziness. Time for Algol to step up and take over!
  • Manhigh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yep. Still using 90/95, and will probably use 2003 when its widely supported.
  • Hamsolo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I use FORTRAN all the time in my Actuarial computing needs. It handles simple calculations better than most modern languages.
  • grandpajesus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3RIP
    Turing and Backus are the gods of this *****
  • cliffordmerkel, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1So... I like such articles.
  • zonk3r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I met John Hall, the guy who wrote the Open Firmware for all of the PowerPC based Mac's a year ago at the Vintage Computer Festival. Really interesting guy. He told me that Fortran is what Open Firmware, the "BIOS" of sorts that PowerPC Mac's used was written in. It was also capable of responding to Fortran commands. If you've ever had to eject a stuck CD out of a Mac using Open Firmware you were making Fortran calls.

    BTW, many of the people that developed and worked on Fortran the language were employed by Apple and Sun (Sun also used the tech in their systems). After Apple's move to Intel and EFI most of the Fortran guys were either let go or retired, including John. He also thought it was rather foolish to do as EFI doesn't have really anything near the capabilities of Open Firmware but he figured Intel convinced them to switch perhaps to add validity to EFI.
  • sfrench, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well done, you owe me a new keyboard.
  • zonk3r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm retarded. I meant Forth not Fortran. Disregard my entire comment. Nothing to see here... move along...
  • al876ani, on 08/22/2008, -0/+0http://forums.m7taj.com/thread478.html http://forums.m7taj.com/thread23967.html http://forums.m7taj.com/thread22576.html http://forums.m7taj.com/forum57 http://forums.m7taj.com/forum11 http://forums.m7taj.com/forum58 http://forums.m7taj.com/forum65 http://forums.m7taj.com/forum42 http://forums.m7taj.com/forum41 http://forums.m7taj.com/forum70 http://forums.m7taj.com/forum20 http://forums.m7taj.com/forum64 http://forums.graaam.com/109029.html http://forums.graaam.com/100885.html http://forums.graaam.com/94805.html http://forums.graaam.com/49 http://forums.graaam.com/66456.html http://forums.graaam.com/91611.html
  • stanco123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I remember the IBM,s and the BBC's from days of old - showing my age
    http://www.stancoservices.com
  • alexhuyalegzz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well... I've always liked posts like that. Dugg.
  • eco2you, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0RIP!

    Such a loss.http://www.eco2you.co.uk
  • uchimalbanish, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Well... I've always liked posts like that. Dugg.
  • pledomobil, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Perfect! Not for me, definitely
  • mhmdkhamis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0http://game.paramegsoft.com/
    http://translate.paramegsoft.com/
  • cupargc, on 11/25/2007, -0/+0Indeed, that is terrible news. Great guy.
  • hezar99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0he was a pimp http://www.2s2s.com/sit.html
  • marx187, on 10/19/2007, -0/+0This guy was a true pioneer in computer programming, let show him some respect - RIP
    http://www.layoutgraphics.net - http://www.oyuncan.com - http://www.uploadp.com - http://www.online-garden-centre.com - http://www.proxyguy.com
  • marx187, on 10/19/2007, -0/+0This guy was a true pioneer in early computing languages, let show him some respect RIP !
    http://www.layoutgraphics.net - http://www.oyuncan.com - http://www.uploadp.com - http://www.online-garden-centre.com - http://www.proxyguy.com
  • AnteChronos, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2 ::= ". "
    ::= "John W. Backus"
    ::= "Farewell " | "Godspeed "
    ::= | |
    ::=
    ::= "In Soviet Russia, " " " " you!"
    ::=
  • Fetching more discussions...
    Show 51 - 55 of 55 discussions

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...


© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.