Computer Programming Pioneer Dies

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John Backus, Computer Programming Pioneer Dies Aged 82 - March 17, 2007
John Backus, who assembled and led the IBM team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped open the door to modern computing, died Saturday at his home in Ashland, Oregon. He was 82.

His daughter, Karen Backus, announced the death, saying the family did not know the cause, other than old age.

Fortran, released in 1957, was "the turning point" in computer software, much as the microprocessor was a giant step forward in hardware, according to J.A.N. Lee, a leading computer historian.

Fortran changed the terms of communication between humans and computers, moving up a level to a language that is more comprehensible by humans. Fortran, in computing vernacular, is considered the first successful higher-level language.

Backus and his youthful team, then all in their 20s and 30s, devised a programming language that resembled a combination of English shorthand and algebra. Fortran, short for the IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System, was very similar to the algebraic formulas that scientists and engineers used in their daily work. With some training, they were no longer dependent on a programming priesthood to translate their science and engineering problems into a language a computer would understand.

"It was a massive step," he said.

Fortran was also extremely efficient, running as fast as programs painstakingly hand-coded by the programming elite, who worked in arcane machine languages. This was a feat considered impossible before Fortran. It was achieved by the masterful design of the Fortran compiler, a program that captures the human intent of a program and recasts it in a way that a computer can process.

In an interview several years ago, Ken Thompson, who developed the Unix operating system at Bell Labs in 1969, observed that "95 percent of the people who programmed in the early years would never have done it without Fortran."

In the Fortran project, Backus tackled two fundamental problems in computing — how to make programming easier, and how to structure the underlying code to make that possible. Backus continued to work on those challenges for much of his career, and he encouraged others as well.

"His contribution was immense, and it influenced the work of many, including me," Frances Allen, a retired research fellow at IBM, said Monday.

Backus grew up in an affluent family in Wilmington, Delaware, the son of a stockbroker.

After flunking out of the University of Virginia, Backus was drafted in 1943. But his scores on army aptitude tests were so high that he was dispatched on government-financed programs to three different universities, with his studies ranging from engineering to medicine.

After the war, Backus found his footing as a student at Columbia University in New York and pursued an interest in mathematics, receiving his master's degree in 1950. Shortly before he graduated, Backus wandered by the IBM headquarters on Madison Avenue in New York, where one of its room-size electronic calculators was on display.

When a tour guide inquired, Backus mentioned that he was a graduate student in math; he was whisked upstairs and asked a series of questions Backus described as math "brain teasers." It was an informal oral exam, with no recorded score.

He was hired on the spot. As what? "As a programmer," Backus replied, shrugging. "That was the way it was done in those days."

Back then, there was no field of computer science, no courses or schools. The first written reference to "software" as a computer term, as something distinct from hardware, did not come until 1958.

In 1953, frustrated by his experience of "hand-to-hand combat with the machine," Backus was eager to simplify programming. He wrote a brief note to his superior, asking to be allowed to head a research project with that goal. "I figured there had to be a better way," he said.

Backus got the nod, and began hiring, one by one, until the team that would eventually develop Fortran reached 10. It was an eclectic bunch that included a crystallographer, a cryptographer, a chess wizard, an employee on loan from United Aircraft, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a young woman who joined the project straight out of Vassar College.

Backus, colleagues said, managed the research team with a light hand. The hours were long, but informal. Snowball fights relieved lengthy days of work in winter.

"We were the hackers of those days," Richard Goldberg, a member of the Fortran team, recalled in an interview in 2000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/busin ... ackus.html
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