Those refs to Panini in Russell & Norvig blew me away a little -- context-free grammars and knowledge representation in 350 B.C.! On Backus, here's what Google

Those refs to Panini in Russell & Norvig blew me away a little -- context-free grammars and knowledge representation in 350 B.C.! On Backus, here's what Google found at http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Backus_John/Backus_John_1.oral_history.2006.102657970.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo...: Booch: And giving examples, and stuff like that. I had read you were influenced by some of the work of Noam Chomsky, that led you to that. Backus: Yeah, well, that’s a funny story. That’s what I said and what I believed, and yet… Who was it? Somebody sort of proved that I was wrong about it, that I hadn’t got it from Noam Chomsky, because the dates were all wrong somehow. But-- God, who was that? Unrelated quote on the next page: Booch: Really! Interesting. So as a programmer, what did you program in most of the time? Backus: I never wrote many programs. I was not good at doing that. What kind of programs was I going to write anyway?