[COFF] Happy birthday, Niklaus Wirth!

[COFF] Happy birthday, Niklaus Wirth!

[dave]

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Almost forgot...

Born on this day in 1934, he pretty much invented ALGOL (and algorithmic 
languages in general; the running joke was that you could call him by 
name or by value)...  From Clem Cole: "The actual joke was Europeans 
called him by name ("ni-klaus vurt") and Americans by value ("nickel-less 
worth").​

-- Dave

[COFF] Happy birthday, Niklaus Wirth!

[bakul]

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On Feb 14, 2019, at 10:08 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
> 
> Almost forgot...
> 
> Born on this day in 1934, he pretty much invented ALGOL (and algorithmic languages in general; the running joke was that you could call him by name or by value)...  From Clem Cole: "The actual joke was Europeans called him by name ("ni-klaus vurt") and Americans by value ("nickel-less worth").​

Niklaus Wirth did come up with Algol-W, based on Algol-60 but he
didn't invent Algol-58 or Algol-60 or Algol-68; though he was on
the IFIP Working Group 2.1 for Algol (IIRC, he thought Algol-68
was overly complicated).

BTW, Niklaus Wirth himself supposedly made this self-referential joke:

  “Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way
  (‘Nick-louse Veert’), Americans invariably mangle it into
  ‘Nickel’s Worth.’ This is to say that Europeans call me by
  name, but Americans call me by value.”

[I haven't found a primary source for this but lots of secondary
sources and variations!]

[COFF] Happy birthday, Niklaus Wirth!

[stewart]

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> On 2019, Feb 15, at 1:46 AM, Bakul Shah <bakul at bitblocks.com> wrote:
> 
> On Feb 14, 2019, at 10:08 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Almost forgot...
>> 
>> Born on this day in 1934, he pretty much invented ALGOL (and algorithmic languages in general; the running joke was that you could call him by name or by value)...  From Clem Cole: "The actual joke was Europeans called him by name ("ni-klaus vurt") and Americans by value ("nickel-less worth").​
> 
> Niklaus Wirth did come up with Algol-W, based on Algol-60 but he
> didn't invent Algol-58 or Algol-60 or Algol-68; though he was on
> the IFIP Working Group 2.1 for Algol (IIRC, he thought Algol-68
> was overly complicated).
> 
> BTW, Niklaus Wirth himself supposedly made this self-referential joke:
> 
>  “Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way
>  (‘Nick-louse Veert’), Americans invariably mangle it into
>  ‘Nickel’s Worth.’ This is to say that Europeans call me by
>  name, but Americans call me by value.”
> 
> [I haven't found a primary source for this but lots of secondary
> sources and variations!]
> _______________________________________________
> COFF mailing list
> COFF at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff

In addition to Algol-W and Pascal. Niklaus Wirth also developed Modula-2 and Oberon.
Oberon is particularly interesting because it included a language, an operating system, and a computer.  There aren’t that many folks who could build a complete environmnet from scratch.
A good bit of the Oberon work was done by Jurg Gutknecht but it is nevertheless an impressive achievement.  In 2013, Wirth put out a rebooted system running on an FPGA.

-L

[COFF] Happy birthday, Niklaus Wirth!

[cym224]

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On 15/02/2019, Lawrence Stewart <stewart at serissa.com> wrote (in part):
> In addition to Algol-W and Pascal. Niklaus Wirth also developed Modula-2 and
> Oberon.
> Oberon is particularly interesting because it included a language, an
> operating system, and a computer.  There aren’t that many folks who could
> build a complete environmnet from scratch.

He also devised an HDL before switching to Verilog.  (The original
Oberon UI influenced Pike's acme, though Pike thought Wirth was too
minimalist.)

At any rate, this page has a picture of Auld Nick (as some wags called
him) in his lab with board and helicopters:
https://www.srf.ch/radio-srf-3/digital/computer-pionier-niklaus-wirth-80-und-aktiv
(Javscript neede to display the photos.)

N.

[COFF] Happy birthday, Niklaus Wirth!

[mutiny.mutiny]

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Pascal was his creation.


At 15 Feb 2019 06:09:01 +0000 (+00:00) from Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org>:
> Almost forgot...
> 
> Born on this day in 1934, he pretty much invented ALGOL (and algorithmic 
> languages in general; the running joke was that you could call him by 
> name or by value)...  From Clem Cole: "The actual joke was Europeans 
> called him by name ("ni-klaus vurt") and Americans by value ("nickel-less 
> worth").​
> 
> -- Dave