John Paul Morrison (born John Paul Rodker in 1937) is a British-born Canadian computer programmer, and the inventor of flow-based programming (FBP). He is the author of the books Flow-Based Programming: A New Approach to Application Development and Flow-Based Programming, 2nd Edition: A New Approach to Application Development. Ed Yourdon has included the former in his list of "Cool Books".
Morrison is the son of the writer, translator and editor, John Rodker and Barbara McKenzie-Smith, an artist. Born John Paul Rodker, his name was changed by deed poll after his parents divorced, and his mother married Edward A. Morrison III, an American citizen living in England, who flew with the RAF during the war. Paul Morrison was educated at The Dragon School, Eton College (he was a King's Scholar, specializing in Classics), and King's College, Cambridge - M.A. in Anthropology and Archaeology, specializing in social anthropology.
He joined IBM UK in January 1959, as an EDPM (Electronic Data Processing Machines) Representative. Five years later, he moved to the US, and then to Montréal, Québec, Canada. He retired from IBM Canada in 1992. The first computer he programmed was the IBM 650 (well, technically, the LEO computer, but that was just an aptitude test); he also wired plug-boards. During his 33-year career with IBM, he worked on compilers, data bases, text processing, and applications in a number of different areas, especially in the field of banking. He is now consulting, and reckons he has now (as of 2010) been programming computers for over 50 years.
In 1978, IBM published an article describing many of the concepts of what is now called flow-based programming, under the name Data Stream Linkage Mechanism. A few years later, he started working with the distinguished IBM architect, Wayne Stevens, to refine and promote these concepts, up until Stevens' death in 1993. IBM Canada developed a related product, called Data Flow Development Manager, which Stevens described in his book Software Design - Concepts and Methods. DFDM was marketed in Japan under the name Data Flow Programming Manager.
Paul Morrison now works as a contractor and consultant, and currently lives in historic Unionville, Ontario.
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