John Backus, RIP

The founder of the FORTRAN programming language has passed away at a mere 82 years of age. I will confess that I have next to no exposure to the language, other than a textbook my mother brought home for me when I was nerding around in BASIC on the TRS-80s and Apple IIs at school. (Yes, I am THAT old...)

But you don't have to be a programmer, much less a FORTRAN alumnus to appreciate how different today's world would be without human-readable (i.e. English-like) source code. Suffice it to say that I would not be blogging now.

I regret that I missed noting the passing of Dr. Hopper back in the 90s, and more so that I didn't think to verify that she is buried at Arlington before I spent a day there last September. So I do want to make my hat tip to Backus for his contributions to my field of work, which (happily) is still one of my passions.