Comments on: Stop End

Stop End

alms — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:49:28 -0800

John W. Backus, creator of Fortran, RIP

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:53:39 -0800

<comment> ::= "."

By: isopraxis

isopraxis — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:55:15 -0800

A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard.

By: isopraxis

isopraxis — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:58:21 -0800

Bon Voyage creator of mustard. Good luck with the MCP in the sky.

By: alms

alms — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:01:04 -0800

Ah, should also have mentioned BNF.

By: Frank Grimes

Frank Grimes — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:02:34 -0800

But his scores on Army aptitude tests were so high that he was dispatched on government-financed programs to three universities, with his studies ranging from engineering to medicine. When a tour guide inquired, Mr. Backus mentioned that he was a graduate student in math; he was whisked upstairs and asked a series of questions Mr. Backus described as math "brain teasers." It was an informal oral exam, with no recorded score. He was hired on the spot. As what? "As a programmer," Mr. Backus replied, shrugging. "That was the way it was done in those days." It sounds like a serendipitous series of events, but how great that the Army and IBM recognized his talent.

By: furtive

furtive — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:03:08 -0800

c c Hello, world. c Program Hello implicit none logical DONE DO while (.NOT. DONE) write(*,10) END DO 10 format('Goodbye, world.') END

By: Rhomboid

Rhomboid — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:15:17 -0800

Obligatory Futurama reference

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:11:16 -0800

He was also great as "The Millionaire" and the voice of Mr. Magoo. RIP, Lovey.

By: mrbill

mrbill — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:22:06 -0800

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:31:54 -0800

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 23:20:01 -0800

PROGRAM REMORSE DO 10, I=1,10 PRINT *,'.' 10 CONTINUE STOP END

By: lupus_yonderboy

lupus_yonderboy — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 23:59:37 -0800

Ahhhh, FORTRAN... the first language I actually got paid to write programs in. The big iron! Ah, my lost youth! :-D er, sourwookie, you aren't confusing John Backus with Jim Backus now are you? .

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:43:08 -0800

Long live John W. Backus. Long live FORTRAN. Meanwhile, *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save *BSD from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:54:05 -0800

RIP Mr. Magoo. =(

By: RussHy

RussHy — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 04:08:31 -0800

By: eriko

eriko — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 04:24:07 -0800

By: scruss

scruss — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:00:06 -0800

. Fortran still amazes me at how flat-out fast the code runs.

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:24:36 -0800

er, sourwookie, you aren't confusing John Backus with Jim Backus now are you? ya think? ;)

By: MtDewd

MtDewd — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:40:07 -0800

10 format('Goodbye, world.') I once wrote a program with a line like that in Fortran IV. The printer used the first character of the string as a carriage control. So the printer executed a 'skip to channel G', and since there was no channel G, I ran a whole box of 14 7/8x11 through the 1403.

By: dragonmage

dragonmage — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 08:25:13 -0800

"God is REAL, unless declared INTEGER."

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 08:31:31 -0800

"You need the willingness to fail all the time," he 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." .

By: davebarnes

davebarnes — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 08:50:45 -0800

1965. My first computer course was based around FORTRAN II. It set my career path.

By: paulsc

paulsc — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:03:30 -0800

I still remember the 1969 thrill of finding a Fortran compiler report, with no errors listed, along with my stack of 80 column punch cards, and my program output listing, in my mailbox in the student computing services center at what is now the University of Memphis. I loathed Fortran, and came, slowly to love it. And I still do, both.

By: seawallrunner

seawallrunner — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:15:51 -0800

My first computer language was Fortran. Good god that was a long time ago. And look where this has taken me to. Thank you John Backus, may you rest in peace.

By: neuron

neuron — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:32:29 -0800

I took a FORTRAN course in 1980. We would do our assigned programs on punch cards, submit the stack of cards to the computer center, and pick up our resulting printout the next day. Taught me to look really hard for syntax errors, etc.

By: Araucaria

Araucaria — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:57:24 -0800

Backus has died, but Fortran lives on. The 2003 revision supports object orientation and C interoperability. The 2008 revision will support the Co-Array Fortran extension, which is about 100 times easier than MPI.

By: the Real Dan

the Real Dan — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 14:43:37 -0800

REALITY, IMMORTALITY COMMON THEMES END

By: Many bubbles

Many bubbles — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:15:58 -0800

RIP.

By: niccolo

niccolo — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:49:06 -0800

Backus also developed BNF (Backus Normal Form or Backus Naur Form, an application of Noam Chomsky's generative grammar to formal computer languages RIP

By: orangemiles

orangemiles — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 11:33:45 -0800

I loved my Fortran 90 class in college. Even though everyone said it was worthless and outdated by then (1994). I just reveled in the beautiful logic of it. RIP.