John Backus, a pioneer in programming languages, passed away at the age of 82.
He lead the creation of FORTRAN, both the language and its advanced compiler. Also, with Peter Naur, developed the Backus-Naur notation – a (still) very important notation used to describe the structure of programming languages.
Great contributions he made to the field of programming languages and computer science…
“Innovation was a constant process of trial and error. You need the willingness to fail all the time. 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.”, John Backus
Rest in peace John, and thanks for all the contributions to our field…
* Read a great story about John Backus at the NY Times website
* Read more about John Backus at the IBM Website
I’ve done my share for FORTRAN coding in the past, and a simple to use and efficient language it is.
ceo
[Photo Source: IBM]