John Backus

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John Backus (American computer scientist) was an American computer scientist. He directed the team that invented and implemented the FORTRAN programming language.

He helped develop grammar methods known as BNF (Backus-Naur Form) later extended to EBNF (Extended Backus-Naur Form).

He later investigated functional programming languages. His 1977 Turing Award lecture was entitled "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?". His functional language was named FP (Functional Programming).

John Backus (American computer scientist) helped develop grammar methods known as BNF later extended to EBNF.

EBNF and BNF are notations (meta-language) for describing other languages (including EBNF itself). Here is a syntax diagram of EBNF that describes EBNF.
Syntax diagram for EBNF

More: EBNF in EBNF

In the 1970's, John Backus told programmers to use functional languages (data driven) rather than Fortran (code driven).

BNF = Backus-Naur Form grammars are named for Backus.

They laughed at and ignored him. Who is this John Backus anyway to be telling "us" what to do?

More: The Fortran programming language