John Backus passes away...

Random thoughts... Considering FORTRAN for what it was when it came out, it was pretty remarkable. I recall an old ACM (was it SIGPLAN?) recollection of one of the first users of 704(?) FORTRAN. What impressed me was that this compiler-on-cards pointed out a syntax error with message of the form: A COMPUTED GOTO REQUIRES A COMMA BETWEEN THE STATEMENT LIST AND VARIABLE. E.G. GOTO (100,200,300),J At one point in time, given machines with different character sets and word- and character sizes, FORTRAN was about the only way to write a portable program. If the program involved, for instance, text manipulation, one included as the first card of the data file one punched with all of the characters of the alphabet to be used and read it into an integer array using 80A1 format. Did any computer built after 1960 NOT have a FORTRAN implementation? IIRC, that was a big selling point for the PDP-8. There was a period in time where just about any serious programmer had a copy of McCracken on their bookshelves. Didn't Backus also participate in the Algol-60 effort? There were big sections of the CDC FTN compiler (prior to the introduction of SYMPL) that were written in FORTRAN. One of the biggest nightmares was the processor for allocating storage in COMMON and EQUIVALENCE statements--a big mass of assigned GOTOs. Even after I understood how it worked, I was afraid to touch it. Sense switch 2 up and go, John! Cheers, Chuck