John W. Backus, developer of Fortran, dies

PCOL writes: "The New York Times reports that John W. Backus, who assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, died at his home at 82. Fortran, released in 1957, was "the turning point" in computer software, much as the microprocessor was a giant step forward in hardware, according to J. A. N. Lee, a leading computer historian. Ken Thompson observed that "95 percent of the people who programmed in the early years would never have done it without Fortran," adding that "It was a massive step." Though debatably not the first high-level programming language, it was the first to achieve wide use. Backus' other accomplishments included inventing the Backus-Naur form (BNF, the almost universally used notation to define formal language syntax), and also the concept of Function-level programming."