History of John Backus's functional programming project [draft]

Summary

History of John Backus's functional programming project ***** DRAFT ***** Paul McJones paul@mcjones.org https://mcjones.org/dustydecks Last modified 18 July 2026 Abstract John Backus explored a sequence of applicative, functional and function-level languages starting before 1969 and continuing until he retired in 1991. The goal of this project is to preserve the surviving materials from this research and to put them into context. , suggestions, and donations of additional materials are greatly appreciated. Contents Acknowledgements John Backus for hiring me in 1974 and giving me a number of historic materials in 2004. Scott Baden for a copy of his "DFT → FFT transformation in FP." Edoardo S. Biagioni for the source code to his FPC and information about Gyula A. Magó's FFP Machine project. Dines Bjørner for information on his work with John Backus. Will Partain for information about Gyula A. Magó. Barry Rosen for permission to post [Rosen1974a, b]. The software crisis In the late 1960s the "software crisis" became a frequent topic of discussion. Computers had become much more capable in speed and memory sizes and prices had come down, but as ambitions grew, a number of programming projects suffered from cost and shedule overruns and poor reliability. A pair of NATO-sponsored conferences on Software Engineering in 1968 and 1969 brought attention to the problems and served as an initial forum for discussing solutions, which included formal methods, design methodologies, and management techniques. Although John Backus attended neither of these conferences, they resonated with his long-held desire to simplify the task of programming. He'd had early success with his Speedcoding and FORTRAN projects. FORTRAN in particular revolutionized the task of writing numerically-oriented programs, in many cases allowing scientists and engineers to write programs rivalling or exceeding the performance of programs written by professional programmers—members of the "priesthood," as Back...