Fortran was the first computer language I ever learned, an experience I found so odious that it was four years before I even attempted another language (C - much better experience), and so it is with uneven sadness (miss him, not Fortran) I report the passing of John Backus.
Fortran was fine for scientific programming, but to my knowledge was practically useless for anything else, and gave computer science much of the nerdy, why-would-you-ever-want-to-slog-though-this reputation it still suffers from today. I genuinely lament the passing of any Turing Award winner, but really, we deserved better.
All of this is not so for Backus' contemporary John McCarthy) . Now THERE was a giant!