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Comments on: RIP John Backus 1924-2007 https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/ On-line Opinion Magazine...OK, it's a blog Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:11:24 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: Bryan https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-24302 Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:31:11 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/#comment-24302 CG, programming can be a job, or it can be a puzzle to be solved, hence the use of the word “code” to describe it. The better sort of programmer “decodes” the process, but some people “encode” and create a new puzzle, not a “solution” to the old one.

In some ways programming is like pointillism, the individual dots have no meaning until you step back and view the whole thing. The best programmers have the ability to do that in their mind and see the entire Parade, the rest of us work with one “face” at a time.

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By: The CultureGhost https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-24167 Thu, 22 Mar 2007 06:10:17 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/#comment-24167 Thank the universe for all of you folks who have written the code, can understand the code and make the code work so I can enjoy the hell out of myself with all the wonderful applications it has brought forth. Thank you.

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By: Bryan https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-24114 Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:23:47 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/#comment-24114 In a way programmers are blessed by the fact that the pioneers were mathematicians who understood and appreciated form and structure. If they had been language majors we would be in a mess because human languages, especially English, tend to be so free-form.

Java is a little too free-form, which leads to sloppy code. I can’t tell you how many programs I’ve looked at that had huge chunks of code that did nothing, because there was no way of reaching it. Sometimes it was just commented out, but other times you find the process in two different places, because, apparently, the structure changed and an important procedure was no longer reachable by the logic.

A little time planning can save a lot of time programming, but bosses want to see people coding, not thinking.

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By: Steve Bates https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-24074 Thu, 22 Mar 2007 01:20:46 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/#comment-24074 Pointers are the best and worst thing about C. – Bryan

You said a mouthful (typed a textarea full?), Bryan. One thing every successor to C has done is to hide the existence of pointers, or enforce what kind of thing they point to, or restrict arithmetic on them, or deal with memory management behind the scenes, or all of the above. I pulled all the usual nasty tricks in my C programming days… probably a good 10 years of my career… but one had to compensate by buying third-party tools to help find one’s own inevitable screw-ups.

FORTRAN had a straightforwardness to it that stood a programmer in good stead when s/he inherited a large mass of someone else’s code in bad condition. Imagine unscrambling a Java application… mind you, I actually sort of like Java… that someone else crafted badly. Backus and his team deserve a lot of credit for that simplicity. “Amazing Grace” Hopper is comparably admirable for the conceptual underpinnings of COBOL, the earliest widely available language I can think of that encouraged programmers to think of data structures explicitly… even if the COBOL language itself required verbosity beyond even, say, my English prose style. 🙂

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By: Mustang Bobby https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-24052 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:11:04 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/#comment-24052 True, Bryan. The idea of it all being a string of 0’s and 1’s is amazing. I’m still trying to figure out how a CD player does it.

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By: Bryan https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-24042 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 15:00:48 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/#comment-24042 There is an elegant simplicity to FORTRAN that makes programming logical to humans. If you look at what’s involved for a computer to do simple math, all of the steps, you can lose the thread of what you are trying to do.

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By: Mustang Bobby https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-24018 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 13:44:50 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/#comment-24018 I remember learning FORTRAN as a freshman in high school in 1967 on a DEC PDP-8/S with paper-punched tapes and teletypes.

I credit it with teaching me that math and algebra is a language with subjects, verbs, modifiers, and complements, and after all those years of elementary and middle-school struggles with numbers, it all made sense to me by appealing to my natural abilities as a writer. That semester of computer science in 9th grade was the only time I got an A in math.

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By: Bryan https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-23974 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 04:06:34 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/#comment-23974 Pointers are the best and worst thing about C. Being able to deal with “garbage collection” to clean up memory is a necessary skill. Every time I see a “page fault” in Windows I have a fit, because I know they failed to clean up after themselves.

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By: Alice https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-23972 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 04:02:54 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/#comment-23972 I agree 100%, but most students don’t take the time or aren’t informed why it’s a good idea to learn C. And for the majority of them, if they never have to deal with pointers or Segmentation Fault they certainly won’t lose any sleep over that. The rest will find a way to learn because they want the challenge.

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By: Bryan https://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-23969 Wed, 21 Mar 2007 03:37:51 +0000 http://whynow.dumka.us/2007/03/20/rip-john-backus-1924-2007/#comment-23969 If you are going to learn Java, you should start with C, because Java is based on C and it’s concepts. That also gives you a leg up on Ada, which uses the same concepts. The major differences are that both eliminate some of the weaknesses in C and expand capabilities.

The newer languages are great, as long as you are not breaking new ground, but, if something doesn’t works you are stuck. With the lower level languages you can always tell an appropriate lie to convince the computer to do what you want.

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