Computer pioneer John Backus dead at 82

Backus developed the Fortran programming language

[LifeinAsia]

[cnn.com...]

John Backus, whose development of the Fortran programming language in the 1950s changed how people interacted with computers and paved the way for modern software, has died.

Although I used Fortran all the time, I haven't written a single line of Fortran code since '91. I'm really showing my age here...

[MamaDawg]

Farewell, father of Fortran ...

(I also learned Fortran long, long ago - never used it much though...)

[phranque]

if language affects your thinking, i owe a lot to this guy!
i was a phortran-coding phool until i got into this here web thing...

[Essex_boy]

Is it used much?

[zCat]

He was also the Backus of the Backus-Naur form (BNF), which (to put it simply) is the meta-description of programming language "grammer" which is used to create parsers in many programming languages.

[phranque]

Is it used much?

i haven't used it for almost 10 years, so i'm not sure what's up with fortran these days.
for decades it was the dominant language for developing engineering and scientific applications.

[vincevincevince]

I've been using fortran on a daily basis recently - in the newer F95 version.