John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies

The New York Times ^ | March 20, 2007 | STEVE LOHR

[Brujo]

We would throw a snowball-sized handful of punches, instead of rice. That would travel through the air and look alot like a comet ... virtually exploding on contact with the bride or groom...

We used them similarly. Until, of course, someone sucked all the fun out of it by solemnly pointing out how sharp the edges of the chads were and how dangerous it might be.

Now all I can think of is Santa Claus in A Christmas Story: “You'll shoot your eye out, kid.”

[RightWhale]

you wouldn't be reading this page if now were still the "simple days".

We had vector screens then. Monochrome. This page would be black and white, or green.

[dfwgator]

"When I started programming, we didn't have any of these sissy 'icons' and 'windows'... all we had were zeros and ones - and sometimes we didn't even have ones." - Scott Adams (Dilbert)

LOL! I use that line all the time.

[dfwgator]

And back in the day, if you weren't learning FORTRAN, you probably used this book:

[MelonFarmerJ]

That wasn't 8K of "memory"...That was 8K of "core"

Your right, I forgot that word, along with sort of knowing how to think in octal. However, I'm still programming and using BASIC, it runs great and is incredibly fast in DOS 6.22 on my Dell 650. Some times the old ways really are the best.....

[fieldmarshaldj]

Rest in peace.