Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!eos!eugene
From: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Backus' FL (not FP)
Summary: Yes there's a difference
Keywords: Nomenclature
Message-ID: <1416@eos.UUCP>
Date: 29 Aug 88 17:04:35 GMT
References: <1165@ndsuvax.UUCP> <5518@ut-emx.UUCP>
Reply-To: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Calif.
Lines: 26

I guess I should clarify.

First, I was the one who sent Tim Budd the abstract of Backus's FL language.
I didn't copy the whole manual which was .25 inches thick.  It looked
interesting.  I first saw the manual at Stanford CS Dept. Library.
(See a pointer!)
I did get a manual from Backus, but I guess by the time Tim asked,
Backus had enough requests that he's stopped answering them.
This topic came up several months ago.  Backus is implementing it
to run on his 3090.  Backus gave a talk about FL about 1 year ago,
open to the public, my officemate went and was impressed.  Apparently few
outsiders went, it was openly posted to ba.seminars.  Please don't
ask me for a copy, perhaps, go borrow Stanford's, I think I should
probably send Tim a copy since I tantalized him (note: the cover like
all IBM covers says "limited distribution").

I think it is known that Backus was also not impressed with Scott Baden's FP
which was distributed with BSD.

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
  resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
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