Re: [TUHS] RIP John Backus

On Sat, 17 Mar 2018, Paul McJones wrote: Thanks; that's the sort of discussion that I was hoping to promote ("stirring" is a long-established tradition here in Oz). And I happen to agree, oddly enough... Was it the 704, or the 709? I recall that the array indexing order mapped directly into its index register or something (like C's "do { ... } while (--i)" maps straight into "SOB" (although I don't know whether the former was influenced by the latter). I have an article somewhere in AUUGN (I don't know which) describing our visit to a DECUS conference. One of the presentations was a slide that compared high- and low-level languages. I don't remember what definition they used, and I can't recall whether BLISS was high or low (I think it was "low with a pointer towards the right"), but they showed FORTRAN on the right, and me being me I piped up with "FORTRAN a high-level language?" I don't recall the exact wording in my subsequent AUUGN report, but it went something like "Half the room broke up into fits of the giggles, and the other half were stonily wondering what was so funny." I never did get that job with DEC some years afterwards, mostly because got borged by Compact (?) with an ensuing management broom (and I've long since lost track of who bought out whom since). Neat story! The bookshelf: I had most of those books once; what's the one on the bottom right? It has a "paperback" look about it, but I can't quite make it out because of the reflection on the spine. -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer."