Re: Noam Chomsky and John Backus

rweaver@ix.netcom.com (Richard Weaver)
18 Sep 1998 22:59:57 -0400

          From comp.compilers
Related articles
Noam Chomsky and John Backus reinhardgantar@hotmail.com (1998-09-13)
Re: Noam Chomsky and John Backus rweaver@ix.netcom.com (1998-09-18)
| List of all articles for this month |
From: rweaver@ix.netcom.com (Richard Weaver)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 18 Sep 1998 22:59:57 -0400
Organization: ICGNetcom
References: 98-09-046
Keywords: history

reinhardgantar@hotmail.com writes:
>My question here is: Was John Backus directly or indirectly
>inspired by Chomsky? [re Fortran]


I've deleted most of your text; choosing not to further circulate text
where it is difficult to separate assertions, suppositions, and
questions.


For the one question above, No. At least not in what Backus writes.
See "History of Programming Languages", Wexelblat editor, page 30,
where Backus writes "As far as we were aware, we simply made up the
language as we went along". The Preliminary Report on Fortran, by the
way, was published in 1954. Backus introduced the syntax notation in
1959 (op cit p121)


Dick W
--

Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.