DevOps Articles

How John Backus’ Fortran Beat Machine Code’s ‘Priesthood’

John Backus one of the founding forefathers of early computer programming, and in many ways set the stage for modern programming languages. Backus led the team that developed the Fortran programming language in 1957, still touted today as “https://research.ibm.com/interactive/frances-allen/” on web pages at IBM. As the Associated Press wrote — half a century later — in https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna17704662, “Prior to Fortran, computers had to be meticulously ‘hand-coded’ — programmed in the raw strings of digits that triggered actions inside the machine.”

Backus began his presentation that day by remembering a time when programming “really was fun” — partly because computers of the day challenged them with “absurd difficulties.

In fact, Backus’ audience was filled with computing pioneers bringing their own inside knowledge about the early days of programming.