john backus 1924 - 2007 | messenger

Redefining Computing While it is perhaps natural and inevitable that languages like Fortran and its successors should have developed out of the concept of the von Neumann computer as they did, the fact that such languages have dominated our thinking for twenty years is unfortunate. It is unfortunate because their long-standing familiarity will make it hard for us to understand and adopt new programming styles which one day will offer far greater intellectual and computational power. —John Backus, 1981 | quoted in the road not taken, r. gabriel

john backus turing award lecture 1977:

Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? A Functional Style and Its Algebra of Programs:
... Each new language claims new and fashionable features, such as strong typing or structured control statements, but the plain fact is that few languages make programming sufficiently cheaper or more reliable to justify the cost of producing and learning to use them.

the history of fortran I, II and III | john backus, acm 1978