John Backus

John Backus died this past Saturday. He was the inventor of Fortran, the first higher level programming language. For as much as programmers these days like to make fun of it, Fortran contributed as much as to the fact that you're now reading this post as Gutenberg's invention did to bring books to the masses. I cut my teeth on that language, as did many of my friends and colleagues, not to mention the gurus who moved the state of the art on from there.

There's a good remembrance of Backus in yesterday's NYT. Thanks for the link, Dan.