Name: Anonymous 2016-03-07 11:58
You are shooting yourself in the foot by thinking in a manner inconsistent with the computer.
No, they never respected computers and programming. The Backus paper "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" is dated 1977.Backus wrote an advertising piece about his new idea which went nowhere and here you are 39 years later, treating his failed experiments like the word of God.