John W. Backus - inventor of FORTRAN, BNF (12/03/24 - 03/17/07)

en.wikipedia.org

1 point·bootload··3 comments

It was reported in the press today [0] that John Backus passes away last week. M77 was one of the first languages I had a crack at calculating latitudes & longitudes for some mapping project. BNF & it's extended form , EBNF is a foundation in language design still used today.

Reference

[0] New York Times, Online, STEVE LOHR, 'John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies':

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/business/20backus.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Accessed 20 March, 2007]

[1] BNF, John Backus & Peter Naur, 'Backus Naur Form':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Backus-Naur_form

[Accessed 20 March, 2007]

[2] EBNF, Wirth 'extended Backus Naur Form':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Backus-Naur_form

[Accessed 20 March, 2007]

dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=5253

Yeah wasn't there as I was writing the post up & checking the links. But I don't consider this a "dupe". It would be if it pointed to the same article (NYT), but I considered the NYT login to kick in, thus making the link worthless in a few days. Hence the reference to the Wikipedia article.

Added links should a) inform and b) be visible for long periods. So I considered the WIkipedia link more reliable. It's something to consider, "Is one article on the same topic" more definitive than another? Does it matter if there is more information on one topic? Is a first report of the a 'time dependent' piece of information the best to post?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com