Computer scientist Nikalaus Wirth passed away on New Year's Day. Wirth is known for creating the Pascal computer language - full disclosure: I wrote a fair amount of code in Turbo Pascal way back in the day.
Pascal passed out of fashion (if indeed it was ever fashionable) a long while back. What I remember of Wirth was his wit. Asked at a conference what the proper pronunciation of his name was. He answered that you could call him by name, in which case it was pronounced "Weert". Or you could call him by value in which case it was pronounced "Worth". Funny, in a really geeky way.
Old programmers don't die; they gosub without return.
ReplyDeleteHe also ginned up Modula, of which Modula 3, AFAIK, was the last of the line of Modula.
ReplyDeleteModula was influential in the design of a number of languages, but wasn't terribly successful in the wild.
IIRC, there was a line of computers back in the day using dual 68000 processors that used Modula natively. I could never get my hands on one, though.
Kurt
Pioneers in every sense of the word, so many have contributed so much to make our computer lives what they are. I am glad there are so many "wicked smaht" people around. Kernighan and Ritchie, Tim Berners Lee,plus the fellow who came up with the clock chip, and so many others who made things happen.
ReplyDelete(I will leave Bill Gates out of this discussion, thank you)
I've always pronounced it wrong, more like I think an "I" should sound than an "O" - think first instead of forth. I had no clue that it should sound like "Weert".
ReplyDeleteI've still done more in Pascal (and its offspring, Delphi) than any other languages.
Pascal, I considered that the best way out of BASIC hell.
ReplyDeleteI learned it in 79 as it was required for a course in data structures. I brought the house down when I stated I had a
system with conforming Pascal asking if it would be
acceptable to use that rather than 029 and cards for the univac 1108. UCSD Pascal was a very useful tool and
had a great screen editor that was language sensitive.
Cool on turbuo, I have that too.
So Nikalaus did a good thing that lead to other good things.
Then again K&R was the next step and they were interesting to talk with.
Structured language a big deal in the later 70s.
Eck!