From Mok-Kong.Shen@lrz.lrz-muenchen.d400.de Mon Oct 25 19:15:21 1993 Received: from cd1.lrz-muenchen.de by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA27551 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Mon, 25 Oct 1993 19:15:21 +0100 Received: by cd1.lrz-muenchen.de; Mon, 25 Oct 93 19:16:13 +0100 X400-Trace: de*d400*lrz-muenchen; arrival 25 Oct 93 17:15:40 Z action Relayed X400-Internal-Trace: MTALRZCD1; arrival 25 Oct 93 19:16:12 +0100 action Relayed X400-Internal-Trace: MTALRZVEE; arrival 25 Oct 93 17:15:41 Z action Relayed P1-Message-Id: de*d400*lrz-muenchen; 931025190842024-MTALRZVEE Ua-Content-Id: 931025190842024- Original-Encoded-Information-Types: IA5-Text Message-Id: <931025190842024-MTALRZVEE*Mok-Kong.Shen@lrz.lrz-muenchen.d400.de> Date: 25 Oct 93 17:15:40 Z From: Mok-Kong.Shen@lrz-muenchen.de To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Subject: RE: Just Honour for Fortran Developer, John Backus - Lest We Forget X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 G. Hunter's claim that the development of Fortran by Backus was a retrograde step is probably incorrect. For at that time it was a forward step, though in a direction different from ALGOL-60. My memory is bad, but I still vaguely remember that at the Paris meeting prior to the finalization of Fortran 90 there was the saying of the sort that if this and that were kept in the document then two big vendors would say NO. Thus more or less strong vendor pressures do seem to exist, although the extent to which they actually succeed to influcence the language development and whether the influence is beneficial or not from a global economic point of view is certainly highly arguable, if not undecidable. I don't know the definite causes of failure of ALGOL-60. But SIMULA-67 doesn't get wide-spread use up till now because of its high licence fees from the very beginning. One of the reasons that ALGOL-68 failed was that its document was almost illegible except for the experts. It should perhaps be noted that Backus is also the author of a paper on FP which has influenced the developments in the field of functional programming. M. K. Shen