[TUHS] RIP John Backus

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sat, 17 Mar 2018, Paul McJones wrote:

>       [...] because FORTRAN has no syntax to speak of.
> 
> I think of FORTRAN as having established the very idea of high-level 
> programming languages. [...]

Thanks; that's the sort of discussion that I was hoping to promote 
("stirring" is a long-established tradition here in Oz).  And I happen to 
agree, oddly enough...  Was it the 704, or the 709?  I recall that the 
array indexing order mapped directly into its index register or something 
(like C's "do { ... } while (--i)" maps straight into "SOB" (although I 
don't know whether the former was influenced by the latter).

I have an article somewhere in AUUGN (I don't know which) describing our 
visit to a DECUS conference.  One of the presentations was a slide that 
compared high- and low-level languages.  I don't remember what definition 
they used, and I can't recall whether BLISS was high or low (I think it 
was "low with a pointer towards the right"), but they showed FORTRAN on 
the right, and me being me I piped up with "FORTRAN a high-level 
language?"

I don't recall the exact wording in my subsequent AUUGN report, but it 
went something like "Half the room broke up into fits of the giggles, and 
the other half were stonily wondering what was so funny."

I never did get that job with DEC some years afterwards, mostly because
got borged by Compact (?) with an ensuing management broom (and I've long 
since lost track of who bought out whom since).

> Disclosure: I worked with John in the 1970s (on functional programming) 
> — see:
> 
> http://www.mcjones.org/dustydecks/archives/2007/04/01/60/ .

Neat story!

The bookshelf: I had most of those books once; what's the one on the 
bottom right?  It has a "paperback" look about it, but I can't quite make 
it out because of the reflection on the spine.

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