The west wind comes from the Wafei Temple
量子位 | 公众号 QbitAI
编程祖师爷Niklaus Wirth于1月1日逝世,享年89岁。
He is a Turing Award winner and is known as one of the greatest programmers of all time, and the programming languages Pascal, Euler, Algol W, Modula, Modula-2, Oberon, Oberon-2, Oberon-07, etc.
He also led the design and development of the Lilith and Oberon operating systems, and wrote more than a dozen books in the field of computer science, including "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs" (1975) and "Compiler Constructions" (1996).
Contrary to the stereotype of a computer scientist, Niklaus Wirth lived with a great sense of humor and personality.
He often joked like this:
In Europe, people usually refer to him with the correct pronunciation of "Nick-louse Veert", while in the United States, people always confuse it with "Nickel's Worth". (That is, Europeans call him by his first name, and Americans call him value)
Anyone who knows programming knows that "call by name" and "call by value" are two different ways to pass parameters, which is also recognized as "the best CS pun of all time".
Bertrand Meyer, the creator of Eiffel's language, posted a tribute:
Niklaus Wirth, a leader in programming languages, programming methodology, software engineering, and hardware design, passed away on January 1. We are deeply saddened by the loss of this pioneer, close colleague, mentor and close friend.
A legend in the world of programming
Niklaus Wirth was born in 1934 in a small town in northern Switzerland.
As a teenager, he shared his passion for hands-on practice and thinking as Pascal, a mathematician, and especially for assembling model airplanes.
He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich, a master's degree in science from Université Laval in Canada, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. The Ph.D. supervisor was Harry Huskey, a pioneer in computer design.
In the early days, Wirth made a name for himself in the field of computer science by creating two languages: Euler and PL360.
Euler is a general-purpose programming language developed based on his doctoral dissertation work, which introduces new concepts such as non-numeric data types and operator precedence, and is considered an important attempt in formal programming language design.
The PL360 system programming language, designed for IBM System/360 series computers, uses a specific parsing method to provide direct control over the hardware, making programming more efficient, and easier to write and maintain.
Both languages are heavily influenced by the early programming language Algol.
Niklaus Wirth was an elite member of the Algol project team, which defined and created a series of language standards, such as the first high-level languages such as FORTRAN.
At the end of the fifties, when computer scientists did not yet have a dedicated academic department and regular conferences, the Algol project laid an important foundation for this emerging discipline. Through Algol, Wirth and other future Turing Award winners C.A.R. (Tony) Hoare, Edsger Dijkstra and Peter Naur have collaborated in depth.
Algol 60 is one of the most important achievements of the Algol project, introducing concepts such as recursive functions, structured code blocks, and local variables.
In 1966, Wirth proposed to design the next Algol language as an extension and improvement of Algol 60 influenced by the Euler language, but the team voted against it, and the team chose the highly complex Algol 68 proposal.
In 1968, Niklaus Wirth resigned from the team to work with Tony Hoare to transform the rejected proposal into an unofficial version of Algol, the Algol-W.
In the same year, Niklaus Wirth returned to teach at ETH Zurich, a position he held until his retirement in 1999.
Among them, Niklaus Wirth created his most influential work, the Pascal language, based on Algol-W.
Following his personal aesthetic, Pascal retains Algol's code structure, logical integrity, and support for recursion, but removes the complexity, making it simple, flexible, and able to compile efficient code quickly.
Wirth later wrote:
The key principle is to include features that are well understood, while excluding those that have not yet been tried or implemented, especially for developers.
In 1971, Pascal was adopted in teaching at ETH Zurich and quickly became popular in other universities around the world.
Wirth also designed a new compiler to work with different computers, which can both write code for virtual machines and generate code that can run on virtual machines.
Emulating a virtual machine on a new computer in this way greatly simplifies the compiler porting process. With the widespread popularity of personal computers, Pascal adapted well to the limited memory and storage space of personal computers, becoming a mainstream programming language.
At the time, Borland introduced the affordable and fast Turbo Pascal compiler, further cementing Pascal's position as an important high-level programming language for personal computers in the '80s.
It also created the Borland legend of the year.
Until now, Pascal was considered one of the best programming languages before the advent of C, and the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) included Pascal as one of the three programming languages.
From Euler to Pascal, we can glimpse a Xi of Wirth, whose academic achievements or programming languages are often named after famous scientists, Euler is named in honor of the famous Swiss mathematician Euler, and Pascal is named in honor of the French mathematician Blaise Pascal.
Later, Wirth, along with other veterans of the Algol project, such as Edsger Dijksta, became interested in programming methods and formal methods. He participated in the IFIP Programming Methodology Working Group, where he came up with ideas for step-by-step refinement of the code as a complement to the various visions of "structured programming" that they had proposed.
Later, he expanded Pascal, proposed Modula, Modula-2, Oberon, etc., and led the design and development of the Lilith and Oberon operating systems.
In addition, Wirth has made many contributions in other areas, such as expanding the famous Barcos paradigm, inventing syntax diagrams, and writing many classic works in the field of computer science, such as "Introduction to System Programming" and "Algorithm + Data Structure = Program".
In 1984, Niklaus Wirth received the Turing Award, the highest honor in computer science, for "developing a series of innovative computer languages."
In his acceptance speech, Niklaus Wirth preached on the importance of "distinguishing early on what is essential and what is ephemeral" and ensuring that "what is ephemeral never encroaches on the systematic, structured design of the core facility".
Every project is first and foremost a learning Xi experiment. You learn best by inventing. It was only by personally undertaking the development project that I was able to have enough knowledge of the inherent difficulties and enough confidence in the inner details to be able to master them.
In addition to the Turing Award, Wirther received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award (1988) and the IBM European Science and Technology Award (1988). He was also elected a member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering (1992) and a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (1994).
Great sense of humor and personality
While a genius computer scientist or software engineer is often seen as an "outsider" in isolation, Niklaus Wirth does not fit the popular stereotype, he has his own personality and sense of humor.
据网友分享，1968年，Niklaus Wirth好友、计算机科学家Edsger W. Dijkstra向《ACM通讯》（Communications of the ACM）提交了一篇论文，原标题是“A case against the goto statement”（反对goto语句的一个案例）。
In order to speed up the publication, the publication editor changed it to the form of a "letter to the editor", and Niklaus Wirth subsequently changed the title to "The goto statement considered harmful".
Subsequently, this title was widely quoted and inspired many similar article titles such as "X considered harmful" and even an article called "Dijkstra considered harmful".
Niklaus Wirth's frequent joke, including the opening one, is a testament to his unique personality.
……
Niklaus Wirth的一生都与编程如影随形。
Even at the 80th birthday celebration seminar, Niklaus Wirth showed off his new Oberon port operating system, running on a home-made CPU mounted on an FPGA development board with random USB peripherals.
面对Niklaus Wirth的离世,网友们纷纷悼念:
My first paid programming job was with Pascal, and then with Modula, which had a profound impact on many of my subsequent work.
I never had the chance to meet him, but he had a significant impact on my career, as well as many others.
R.I.P
Reference Links:
[1]https://twitter.com/Bertrand_Meyer/status/1742613897675178347
[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38858012
[3]https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/wirth_1025774.cfm
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