On Mar 19, 2007, at 7:53 PM, June Kim wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/obituaries/20cnd-backus.html?
_r=1&oref=slogin
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Backus had a reciprocal relationship with APL. He admired it but
didn't think it had gone far enough. In his FP he described an
"insert" function which was later adopted by APL, as a better way to
describe what was then called "reduction" in APL.
It was some of his cohorts who,without meaning it, benefitted APL;
they were in charge of a computer, but chose not to give all 8 bits
of a byte. Since this was required by the APL group, they had to go
their own way, successfully.
My first manager at IBM was Andy Kinslow, who was another one of the
group that included Backus. With Andy, I helped create the first IBM
time-sharing system.
Eugene
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