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Re: programming languages, it's worth mentioning that a Sanskrit grammarian invented something like context-free grammars around 2500 years ago: https://en.wiki
by abecedarius 10y ago
Re: programming languages, it's worth mentioning that a Sanskrit grammarian invented something like context-free grammars around 2500 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form#Histo...
- vram22 10y agoCool. I knew about Panini as a grammarian, but don't think I knew the part you mention about context-free grammars.
- vram22 10y agoAn interesting thing from that Wikipedia article: "The name Pāṇini Backus form has also been suggested in view of the fact that the expansion Backus normal form may not be accurate, and that Pāṇini had independently developed a similar notation earlier." So that may be one of the (few or common?) cases where something was named (or considered being named) after a person thousands of years after the person existed :)