Dan McCracken interview: Overview

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On a separate page: Selected quotes from this interview

Brief background

Dan McCracken became a faculty member in the Computer Science Department at the City College of New York in 1981. Dan was widely respected for his early books on FORTRAN programming. Many senior computer scientists will fondly tell you that they “learned FORTRAN from McCracken.” At the time of this interview, he had recently published a text on user centered website development. McCracken held degrees in mathematics, chemistry and a Master’s of Divinity. In his 55 years of experience in the computing field, the last 35 were in academia. He was president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from 1978-1980 and was inducted as an ACM Fellow in 1994.

At the time of this interview, Dan McCracken was a Full Professor in the Computer Science Department at City College of New York. On July 31, 2011, a posting on Dan’s Facebook page announced that he had died peacefully and comfortably in his home on July 30, 2011.