From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: bakul at bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah) Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2019 22:46:17 -0800 Subject: [COFF] Happy birthday, Niklaus Wirth! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Feb 14, 2019, at 10:08 PM, Dave Horsfall 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!]