Fortran的发明人John W. Backus过世了

上周六过世的。终年82岁。当年John在IBM大型机上用机器语言编程，累得半死。一怒之下组建了一支10人的研发队伍，开发出了Fortran。我们常用的BNF语法也是他的手笔。//sigh...不知不觉已经到了心目中的英雄们渐行渐远的年纪。纽约时报有报道。想不到John W Backus当年也有那么多传奇故事。摘他的话自勉：你得愿意不断失败。。。你得产生很多主意并刻苦工作，最后不过发现这些点子其实没用。你就这样一次又一次地尝试，直到你找到真正可行的想法。

“You need the willingness to fail all the time,” he said. “You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.”