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Niklaus Wirth
1. Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Wirth (Swiss computer scientist) is a Swiss computer scientist who designed several programming languages including Pascal and Modula-2 and Oberon.
Wirth designed what is called
WSN (Wirth Syntax Notation) as an alternative to
BNF (Backus-Naur Form). This is sometimes known as
EBNF (Extended Backus-Naur Form). He popularized the use of syntax diagrams (or railroad diagrams) as a visual depiction of grammars.
2. Essence of programming
The essence of programming is finding the right (or at least appropriate) structure, and the experienced programmer is the person who has the intention to find it at the stage of initial conception instead of during a gradual process of improvements and modifications. Yet, the programmer who has the courage to restructure when a better solution emerges is still much better off than the one who resigns and elaborates a program on the basis of a clearly inadequate structure, for this leads to those products that no one else, and ultimately not even the originator himself can "understand". Computer scientist Niklaus Wirth, 1983 Wirth, N. (1983).
Programming in Modula-2, 2nd (corrected) ed. Berlin: Springer-Verlag., p. 86..
3. Stepwise refinement
Stepwise refinement (Wirth, 1971) implements a solution bottom-up in steps as a progressive elaboration of essential parts of the solution. As part of risk avoidance, stepwise refinement can allow certain decisions to be delayed until they are necessary.
4. Wirth's Law
In his 1995 paper A plea for lean software, Wirth stated software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is getting faster. This is known as Wirth's Law.
5. Code and data
Wirth defines programs as composed of data structures and algorithms (Wirth, 1975,
Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs)
Data structures: data component
Algorithms: code component
Code can be data and data can be code. Von Neumann first recognized this principle.
6. Structured programming
In his book
Structured programming (1975), Nicklaus Wirth, inverter of the
Pascal programming language, popularized the idea of "
structured programming" where programs consisted of a hierarchy of single-entry single exit blocks without using the goto statement.
7. Pascal programming language
Niklaus Wirth was the inventor of the Pascal programming language.
Based in ideas from ALGOL, with block scope, standard Pascal was a fine academic programming language that needed extensions to make it commercially useful.
Eventually, Niklaus Wirth developed a language called Modula-2 and then Oberon. Both were popular for a while but never developed a huge programmer base.
8. Pascal programming language
In the 1970's, the Pascal programming language, invented by Niklaus Wirth, was named after Blaise Pascal.
9. Anders Hejlsberg
Anders Hejlsberg was a coauthor of Turbo Pascal, inspired in part by the "
Tiny Pascal" compiler in Niklaus Wirth's book "
Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs".
Later, Anders became chief architect of the popular Delphi Pascal system.
10. End of page
