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Niklaus Wirth has died

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Re: Niklaus Wirth has died

#61

Post by skrebbel »

khazhoux wrote: post #13

Wirth was the chief designer of the programming languages Euler (1965), PL360 (1966), ALGOL W (1966), Pascal (1970), Modula (1975), Modula-2 (1978), Oberon (1987), Oberon-2 (1991), and Oberon-07 (2007). He was also a major part of the design and implementation team for the operating systems Medos-2 (1983, for the Lilith workstation), and Oberon (1987, for the Ceres workstation), and for the Lola (1995) digital hardwa…

I still wonder what the tech world would’ve been like today if Wirth had had the marketing sense to call Modula “Pascal 2”

Re: Niklaus Wirth has died

#62

Post by Jtsummers »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #47
kleiba wrote: post #16

@HN: Black banner, please?

Not trying to be crude, but is someone passing away after a long, rich life of 89 years something to mourn? Isn’t that kind of the best case scenario? For me something like a black banner signifies a tragedy, not merely a death. A bunch of children being shot, a war, a disease ravaging a country, etc. I’m curious to learn others’ perspectives however.

While very out of fashion these days, a black armband used to be a signal of mourning someone's death, whether the death was a "tragedy" (likely meaning unexpected, particularly violent, particularly early, or something similar) or not. The black bar is a digital imitation of that.

Niklaus Wirth contributed quite a bit to our field, and, directly or indirectly, impacted many of the people who frequent this (programming technology oriented) site.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_armband

Re: Niklaus Wirth has died

#63

Post by vidarh »

When I first got to play with Turbo Pascal (3.something?), I was more impressed by the concise expression of the language in the EBNF in the manual than by Turbo Pascal itself, and it was what made me interested in parsers and compilers, and both Wirth's approach to them and the work his students undertook in his research group has been an interest of mine for well over 30 years since.

Re: Niklaus Wirth has died

#64

Post by kragen »

Qem wrote: post #41
kragen wrote: post #2

begin this is terrible news; is there a better source than twitter (edit: https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/pipermail/oberon/2024/016856.html thanks to johndoe0815); wirth was the greatest remaining apostle of simplicity, correctness, and software built for humans to understand; now only hoare and moore remain, and moore seems to have given the reins at greenarrays to a younger generation; young people may not be aware of th…

> wirth was the greatest remaining apostle of simplicity, correctness, and software built for humans to understand; now only hoare and moore remain Also Alan Kay still with us.

in the neat/scruffy divide, which goes beyond ai, wirth was the ultimate neat, and kay is almost the ultimate scruffy, though wall outdoes him

alan kay is equally great, but on some axes he is the opposite extreme from wirth: an apostle of flexibility, tolerance for error, and trying things to see what works instead of planning everything out perfectly. as sicp says

> Pascal is for building pyramids—imposing, breathtaking, static structures built by armies pushing heavy blocks into place. Lisp is for building organisms—imposing, breathtaking, dynamic structures built by squads fitting fluctuating myriads of simpler organisms into place.

kay is an ardent admirer of lisp, and smalltalk is even more of an organism language than lisp is

Re: Niklaus Wirth has died

#65

Post by blast »

parshua wrote: post #43

I started my first company based on Delphi, which itself was based on Turbo Pascal. Wirth was a great inspiration, and his passing is no small loss. May his work keep inspiring new programmers for generations to come. One of his quotes: "Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way ('Ni-klows Wirt'), Americans invariably mangle it into 'Nick-les Worth'. This is to say that Europeans call me by name, bu…

Wirth must have adopted the quote (how could he not), but it actually goes back to a clever line by someone introducing him at a conference.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38858993

Re: Niklaus Wirth has died

#67

Post by masklinn »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #47
kleiba wrote: post #16

@HN: Black banner, please?

Not trying to be crude, but is someone passing away after a long, rich life of 89 years something to mourn? Isn’t that kind of the best case scenario? For me something like a black banner signifies a tragedy, not merely a death. A bunch of children being shot, a war, a disease ravaging a country, etc. I’m curious to learn others’ perspectives however.

> Not trying to be crude, but is someone passing away after a long, rich life of 89 years something to mourn? Isn’t that kind of the best case scenario?

It can be "kind of a best case scenario" and yet you still mourn the loss. Mourning doesn't require a tragedy.

My grandmother died in her sleep at 94, pretty healthy all things considered (still had a good head, could putter along, and was in her own home of more than 60 years), after having had a great day. Pretty much the best death she and we could have hoped for. I still wouldn't have minded having her nearby for a few more years.

Re: Niklaus Wirth has died

#68

Post by rileyphone »

PaulHoule wrote: post #20
kragen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, and i hope meyer would know but still, it's twitter, liable to vanish or block non-logged-in access at any moment

Since Twitter is suppressing the visibility of tweets that link outside their site I think it would be perfectly fair to block links to twitter, rewrite them to nitter, etc. There also ought to be gentle pressure on people who post to Twitter to move to some other site. I mean, even I've got a Bluesky invite now.

Please don't make dang do more work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38847048

Re: Niklaus Wirth has died

#69

Post by madmountaingoat »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #47
kleiba wrote: post #16

@HN: Black banner, please?

Not trying to be crude, but is someone passing away after a long, rich life of 89 years something to mourn? Isn’t that kind of the best case scenario? For me something like a black banner signifies a tragedy, not merely a death. A bunch of children being shot, a war, a disease ravaging a country, etc. I’m curious to learn others’ perspectives however.

I think mourning is more than just tragedy. It's recognition of loss. And the tradition of black things around death has seemed more a sign or respect than as indication of some tragic underpinnings. But I actually don't know the history of the tradition, so I am happy to be corrected.
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