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John Backus Dead

John Backus
KindPerson
Born1924
Died2007
StatusDead
Fieldprogramming languages
Sourceen.wikipedia.org ↗

Led the IBM team that shipped FORTRAN (1957) — the first commercially successful compiler — and co-invented BNF notation.

Worked at IBM
Created FORTRAN ALGOL 60 FP Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?

Led the IBM team that built FORTRAN (1957), invented BNF for ALGOL 58/60, then turned on his own creation — 'Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?' (1978) argued for functional programming.\n\nTuring Award 1977. His career is the arc of the field: practical engineering to fundamental critique.

Sources

  1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Backus