On Wed, 21 Mar 2007, Carl Cerecke wrote:
For all those who program in a high level language (i.e. higher than assembler), John Backus is the guy who first made it possible in the 1950's.
Now if we can just kill off FORTRAN.... we can get back to where we were when LISP arrived and start making progress. :-) Actually, I've been reading his Turing award paper... http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf and the guy clearly wasn't nearly as evil as the existence of FORTRAN makes him out to be. :-)) Sorry, I cut my teeth on Fortran as well...and they still hurt. (Hint: C/C++ globals are enabled by the exactly the same ummfeature of the linker as FORTRAN common blocks, and possess many, but not all of the painful attributes.) John Carter Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639 Tait Electronics Fax : (64)(3) 359 4632 PO Box 1645 Christchurch Email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] New Zealand
