“Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs.”

— John Backus

Quoted in the IBM employee magazine Think in 1979. Cited by his Associated Press obituary http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17704662/

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John Backus4

American computer scientist 1924–2007

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“Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs.”

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John Backus4

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