Niklaus Wirth, inventor of Pascal and other programming languages, died on January 1; “His
ideas on strong typing, modularity, and reducing complexity stuck with me,” said SmartGo’s Anders Kirulf in a post last month.
Wirth “affected the course of my life at several points,” notes Kierulf, who studied at ETH Zürich, where Wirth started the computer science department. “Unfortunately, they started with just year 1 and year 3, so I had to slog through another year of math before switching to computer science full time.”
Kierulf adds that he took classes with Wirth, “among them a class on compilers. His ideas on strong typing, modularity, and reducing complexity stuck with me. Using the time a compiler compiles itself as both a measure of language complexity and compiler quality really emphasized removing anything unnecessary from the language, and later led him to Oberon.”
In 1990, when Kierulf went back to ETH Zürich to finish his, Wirth was at his oral exam. “My memory is that he asked a question, but I can’t remember what it was. As the department head at the time, his signature is on my diploma… I never knew him well, but Niklaus Wirth affected my life for the better at many points, and I’m very thankful for his contributions.”