[TUHS] RIP John Backus

[Nemo]

On 16/03/2018, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> We lost computer pioneer John Backus on this day in 2007; amongst other
> things he gave us FORTRAN (yuck!) and BNF, which is ironic, really,
> because FORTRAN has no syntax to speak of.

Early on, I landed a job requiring VAX FORTRAN but I was not actually
conversant in it -- I told a white lie.  I saw "FORTRAN Tools for
VAX/VMS" at a local technical store and read it cover to cover.  (The
title was an intentional play on Kernighan & Plauger and built similar
tools using FORTRAN -- side topic but whatever happened to Plauger?)
Said implementation pleasantly surprised me:  nothing at all like the
primitive early versions.

N.

>
> --
> Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will
> suffer."
>