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| Author | Pascal's father Niklaus Wirth is dead (Read 16885 times) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bolkonskij
Administrator 1024 MB  Posts: 2023 
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on: January 04, 2024, 09:07
Little bit of sad news today, but apparently Niklaus Wirth has passed away. At age 89 this doesn't come fully unexpected. Wirth is the father of the programming language Pascal, which fundamentally is the "language of classic Mac OS", as many of you will be aware. He also invented Oberon, Modula, ALGOL W and a few more. Definitely a pioneer and a true titan of programming. He also authored a lot of books which to the best of my knowledge were pretty much basic literature for Computer Science (under)grads back in the 90's and 2000's. No idea about today. Sad, but not unexpected. Rest in Peace, Niklaus! And thank you very much for your awesome contributions to the computing world. |
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Last Edit: January 04, 2024, 09:09 by Bolkonskij
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68040
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512 MB  Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #1 on: January 04, 2024, 10:33
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Pascal was the language I programmed my first truly successful project in. It was also the one that taught me how to code professionally. They don't make 'em like Niklaus anymore. He had an academic mindset with enough common sense to develop something that was actually usable "for the rest of us". Today's academia is - not really worth mentioning, And the Elons Musks of this world are so glued to their ego that their products often suffer from it. I really mean it: Niklaus Wirth, Jay Miner, Steve Jobs ... those are/were one of a kind. They broke the mold when they made 'em. Children of a bygone era. Soon, the rest of us IT "dinos" shall join them in bit-shift heaven.
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #2 on: January 04, 2024, 10:57
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I often think of the future we promised ourselves back in the day and it reminds me of Moses and his people. The agony they went through, crossing burning deserts and deep seas, all in the unquenchable desire to reach their promised land. And once they got there what awaited them was more toil and pain and the fighting never stopped. Did we get the future we deserve, because we were literally "asking for it", or do we have a right to feel a bit betrayed by our fate? I hope Niklaus found the answer, wherever he is now.
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #3 on: January 04, 2024, 14:54
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I thought Wirth was much older than he was and that he had most likely passed away some time back. I read a bunch of Wirth’s writings back in the 80s. The writings made clear to me that I would never amount to a hill of beans as a programer. He was quite rigid in this thinking and methodologies. For me I love swimming in chaos more than I like seeking order and procedure. I was and still am impressed with Wirth’s Law. Software gets slower at a quicker rate than hardware gets faster. (Wirth though credits that saying to someone else.)
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #4 on: January 04, 2024, 16:05
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While his rigidness cost Wirth dearly in the community, once the C craze had taken off, experiencing it early on in my career made me a (much) better programmer for sure. I thank him for that discipline, even so I abscondered to C and beyond, soon after I had learned to master Pascal.  And we vintage warriors can all attest to the truth in Wirth's law. Heck, we can even prove it now, application by application.
Last Edit: January 04, 2024, 16:07 by 68040
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Bolkonskij
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Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023
Reply #5 on: January 06, 2024, 14:42
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Definitely very academic. But on the other hand, that philosophy shows in his works. You mentioned programming in Pascal. It's just blessed by a beautiful structure and very clear way of coding. Especially if you compare it to C ...
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #6 on: January 06, 2024, 15:24
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Pascal was the "Ueber-Ich" - the way we ought to program. C is the "Es". The nasty monster that should not be allowed to roam unrestrained. Well, we all know who won. 
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wove
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1024 MB Posts: 1363
Reply #7 on: January 06, 2024, 15:41
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I thought that Wirth had create Pascal as a teaching language, and at least initially it was not intended to be used as a general purpose language. I started on the Commodore, so my language was Basic, although I did take courses in Fortran. One my disappointments with the Mac was that it had no language built in. So while I got a Mac my Commodore remained my main day to day machine until the mid 90s. The was a computer meant to be programmed in Pascal, and it did not even include Pascal.
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68040
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512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !
Reply #8 on: January 06, 2024, 16:13
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Yes, he initially created Pascal as a teaching tool. But that was in the haydays of Basic - a complete maintenance nightmare when it came to code development. There was a real danger back then, that the victory trail of that hodgepodge between Fortran, COBOL and Lord knows what would take over software development and cause the bulk of programs to become utterly unmaintainable in no time. The project managers were desperately itching for a new language that would force their developers to maintain some minimum level of discipline, yet wasn't proprietorially priced out of reach for most smaller companies. And then came along Borland, Philippe Kahn and Turbo Pascal. For many in the PC software industry, he was like a godsend: A Prophet out of the wilderness and into the promised land. Indeed, he was one of those forgotten pioneers, who deserves to be remembered.
Last Edit: January 06, 2024, 16:16 by 68040
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 674 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #9 on: January 08, 2024, 17:21
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I'm a grey beard, actually had Modula-2, and helped first C++ course, in College. At the time I felt like C had two things that caused its rise over Pascal, weak typing and terseness. The world is still spinning both ways on type, but all modern languages are pretty terse. He had a lot of visionary ideas, post-Pascal, that never took, some really intriguing ones with virtual machines and os's...echoing much of what we see with Java (which I'm sure he felt chagrined): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system)
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