John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies - New York Times

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies - New York Times

This is a very nice tribute to an overlooked contributor to computer science. The first two computer books I bought were around 1971 or 1972. McCracken's "A Guide to FORTRAN Programming" was one of the first computer books I purchased (mail order, with a check my parents wrote for me, directly from the publisher in New York). I was on the Wiley and other mailing lists for years because they thought I was a business, not a 15 year old.

At Georgia Tech in 1974-75, our freshman programming course used Cooper & Smith's "Standard FORTRAN: A Problem-Solving Approach". They have a whole chapter on punch cards...

I started working at Raytheon in the early 1990's and consulted with the rocket scientists (well, the IT guys who supported the rocket scientists) in corporate regarding report tools. FORTRAN was one of the top 5 tools used to generate reports within Raytheon.

I haven't done much programming in the past ten years, but Backus was born the same year as my father, and I wonder if the current generation can appreciate his contributions to the current state of computer technology.