John Backus, the developer of the programming language Fortran, has died aged 82.
His death comes just three months after the 100th anniversary of the birth of Grace Hopper, who developed the companion programming language for business, Cobol.
Backus, who developed Fortran at around the same time as Hopper's breakthrough, died at his home in Oregon on Saturday. He worked for IBM, joining the company in 1950 after a stint in the army and various temporary jobs. He worked with a small team for a year developing in assembly language for the IBM 701, which was introduced in 1952.
Backus was unhappy as a programmer and found developing in assembly language (which was mainly 0s and 1s) a frustrating experience, which made him turn his mind to finding an easier way to programme. From that came the idea for a language that he took to the management of IBM. He told them that because around 75 percent of programming time was wasted with entering code and debugging it, he could save a lot of very expensive labour by developing a tool that could shorten the process.
IBM gave him a small budget and a team of programmers, and Backus began work on Fortran (the IBM Mathematical FORmula TRANnslation System) in 1953, the year after Hopper had begun work on A-0, the forerunner of Cobol.
Fortran caught on very quickly in the scientific and engineering communitues. Successive versions have added support for many areas and it is now used in professions such as climate modelling, computational fluid dynamics, computational physics, and computational chemistry.
In order to post a comment you need to be registered and logged in
Log in or create your ZDNet UK account below
By signing up for this service, you indicate that you agree to our Terms and Conditions and have read and understood our Privacy Policy. Questions about membership? Find the answers in the Membership FAQ
You are quite right. HDS has not been marketing their products well. USPV is miles ahead in terms of ease of use and technology on enterprise...
38 minutes ago by sgardia on Will the SUN set on Hitachi Data Systems OEM relationship?
Fedora is the same way as well. The yum update system uses "presto" which shrinks the amount of data needed for download. It's a great system....
12 hours ago by apexwm on Can you believe it - 2765 kB will be freed?
Updated ID cards considered for 2012: [zdnet.co.uk] The government is considering introducing a new generation of ID... http://dlvr.it/KpBZ
12 hours ago on Twitter by cybfor Google, Viacom trade blows in YouTube copyright spat: [zdnet.co.uk] Google and the US media giant Viacom have issued... http://dlvr.it/Knht
13 hours ago on Twitter by cybfor Be sure to include an audio option - eg. a beep tone - to intensify and reiterate the action. This will greatly benefit some consumers and give...
13 hours ago by CIMITL Data disposal is really important to get right. There are standards set by UK and US federal governments to ensure that data is kept secure. If...
14 hours ago by DataSecurityUK Online Fiber Optic Certification Join a talented group of professionals, who are dedicated to Fiber Optic Networking technology. The online course...
16 hours ago by chaycon1 on BT launches 40Mbps fibre-based broadband Online Fiber Optic Certification Join a talented group of professionals, who are dedicated to Fiber Optic Networking technology. The online course...
16 hours ago by chaycon1 on Google to build gigabit broadband to the home
Hi Dava, I'm glad to hear from you, and glad that you see things from the other side. I think that is the most important point of the whole...
16 hours ago by J.A. Watson on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) and the Latest Tempest
please please please please please please kill that spam bot.
17 hours ago by dava4444 on ZDNet UK: faster, smarter, still IT all the way it didn't post the link it's 'Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta-1 First Look' on youtube :) Dava
20 hours ago by dava4444 on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) and the Latest Tempest Hi James I disagree, Ubuntu needs a GUI update and this one IMO is quite good. your pics show a low res. here's a high res. on YouTube* The...
20 hours ago by dava4444 on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) and the Latest Tempest Hi any news on the comment bot? knocking me back from my own blog is a bit cheeky lol *Mulder to Scully* "I think it has an agenda.." I know, I...
21 hours ago by dava4444 on ZDNet UK: faster, smarter, still IT all the way if you look at the Brentwood exchange on samknows it servers 21,000 residential propertiesm, Lowestoft serves 31,000! Come on BT sort yourselves...
21 hours ago by benny boy on BT fibre broadband coming to 69 more towns
[programming] H.264 - a sting in the tail http://reddit.com/bfu4q [zdnet.co.uk]
22 hours ago on Twitter by pbreddit
H.264 - a sting in the tail [programming] 13 points, submitted by zigzag [zdnet.co.uk] http://reddit.com/bfu4q
23 hours ago on Twitter by reddit Malware infects second Vodafone HTC phone: [zdnet.co.uk] A second Android-based HTC Magic from Vodafone has been... http://dlvr.it/KhKx
1 day ago on Twitter by cybfor
Chatter preview http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/application-development/2010/03/17/salesforce-opens-up-chatter-developer-preview-40088348/
1 day ago on Twitter by miyabi81For multi-store outlets, including retail, banking, grocery, gas, hospitality, convenience stores and others, reducing (or avoiding) the cost of in-store system support and maintenance while maintaining compliance with PCI and other requirements has become a strategic challenge.
Speaker: Dr. Chenxi Wang, Principal Analyst, Security and Risk Management, Forrester Research, Inc. As Enterprises are increasingly connected to the Internet and as hard organizational boundaries are fast disappearing, security professionals are facing fresh challenges in Enterprise computing.
This tutorial is for new MindManager users and teaches you how to get started, by creating maps, reading maps and organizing your information.
