The paper by Backus to which this post links is one I had not seen before. I read through the whole thing, and it struck me instantly as a classic which every hacker here should read. It is surely one of the best things Backus ever wrote.<p>Interspersed among long-obsolete technical details are gems of insight about software and programming languages that are worth their weight in gold. The final paragraphs articulate Backus' critique of "Von Neumann languages" in a way that even his (much better known) masterpiece on FP doesn't achieve.<p>I had no idea that, prior to Fortran I, the very possibility of a workable compiler had already been widely rejected as impossible because of grandiose claims made by vendors. In other words, vaporware is older than high-level languages.<p>And behind the dry academic tone one gets a feel for the the brilliant design work, all-night debugging sessions and camaraderie of one of the greatest teams of all time - as well as, to judge by his consistently humble self-effacement, one of the greatest team leaders.<p>So to the chorus of chicken littles incessantly bemoaning the decline of Hacker News, now's your chance to redeem yourself: shut up and read this paper!
One of the problems FORTRAN was trying to solve (from Backus's paper): "The cost of programmers associated with a computer center was usually at least as great as the cost of the computer itself." Interesting how things change; the ratio would be more like 100:1 now.