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Niklaus Wirth

 
Niklaus Wirth

 
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Niklaus Wirth
 
 
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Niklaus Emil Wirth (born February 15, 1934) is a Swiss
Switzerland

Switzerland is a landlocked Swiss Alps country of roughly 7.7 million people in Western Europe with an area of 41,285 km?. Switzerland is a federal republic consisting of 26 states called Cantons of Switzerland....
 computer scientist
Computer science

Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems....
, best known for designing several programming language
Programming language

A programming language is a machine-readable artificial language designed to express computations that can be performed by a machine, particularly a computer....
s, including Pascal
Pascal (programming language)

Pascal is an influential imperative programming and Procedural programming programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structure....
, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering
Software engineering

Software engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches....
. In 1984 he won the Turing Award
Turing Award

The A. M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community....
 for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages.

h was born in Winterthur
Winterthur

Winterthur is a city in the Cantons of Switzerland of Zurich in northern Switzerland. It has the country's List of cities in Switzerland#Major agglomerations by population with an estimate of more than 100,000 people....
, Switzerland
Switzerland

Switzerland is a landlocked Swiss Alps country of roughly 7.7 million people in Western Europe with an area of 41,285 km?. Switzerland is a federal republic consisting of 26 states called Cantons of Switzerland....
, in 1934. In 1959 he earned a degree in Electronics Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zürich).






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Niklaus Emil Wirth (born February 15, 1934) is a Swiss
Switzerland

Switzerland is a landlocked Swiss Alps country of roughly 7.7 million people in Western Europe with an area of 41,285 km?. Switzerland is a federal republic consisting of 26 states called Cantons of Switzerland....
 computer scientist
Computer science

Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems....
, best known for designing several programming language
Programming language

A programming language is a machine-readable artificial language designed to express computations that can be performed by a machine, particularly a computer....
s, including Pascal
Pascal (programming language)

Pascal is an influential imperative programming and Procedural programming programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structure....
, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering
Software engineering

Software engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches....
. In 1984 he won the Turing Award
Turing Award

The A. M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community....
 for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages.

Biography

Wirth was born in Winterthur
Winterthur

Winterthur is a city in the Cantons of Switzerland of Zurich in northern Switzerland. It has the country's List of cities in Switzerland#Major agglomerations by population with an estimate of more than 100,000 people....
, Switzerland
Switzerland

Switzerland is a landlocked Swiss Alps country of roughly 7.7 million people in Western Europe with an area of 41,285 km?. Switzerland is a federal republic consisting of 26 states called Cantons of Switzerland....
, in 1934. In 1959 he earned a degree in Electronics Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zürich). In 1960 he earned an M.Sc. from Université Laval
Université Laval

Universit? Laval is the oldest centre of education in Canada, and was the first institution in North America to offer higher education in French language....
, Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
. Then in 1963 he was awarded a Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
in EECS
EECS

EECS is an abbreviation for Electrical Engineering and Computer science. It is a designation used at some University for the major or department that blends these two fields together....
 from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley is a public university research university located in Berkeley, California, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines....
, supervised by the computer designer pioneer Harry Huskey
Harry Huskey

Harry Douglas Huskey is an United States computer designer pioneer.Huskey was born in the Smoky Mountains region of North Carolina and grew up in Idaho....
.

From 1963 to 1967 he served as assistant professor of Computer Science
Computer science

Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems....
 at Stanford University
Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private university research university located in Stanford, California, California, United States....
 and again at the University of Zurich
University of Zurich

The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 24,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new Faculty of philosophy....
. Then in 1968 he became Professor of Informatics
Informatics

Informatics is the science of information, the practice of information processing, and the engineering of information systems. Informatics studies the structure, algorithms, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process, access and communicate information....
 at ETH Zürich, taking a two year sabbatical at Xerox PARC
Xerox PARC

PARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology....
 in California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
. Wirth retired in 1999.

Programming Languages

Niklaus Wirth Large
Wirth was the chief designer of the programming language
Programming language

A programming language is a machine-readable artificial language designed to express computations that can be performed by a machine, particularly a computer....
s Euler, Algol W
ALGOL W

Algol-W is a programming language, proposed by Niklaus Wirth and C. A. R. Hoare as a successor to ALGOL 60 in the ALGOL 68 committee.It represented a relatively conservative modification of ALGOL 60, adding Character string , bitstring, complex number and Reference to Composite type datatypes and evaluation strategy#Call by copy-restore pa...
, Pascal
Pascal (programming language)

Pascal is an influential imperative programming and Procedural programming programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structure....
, Modula
Modula

The Modula programming language is a descendent of the Pascal . It was developed in Switzerland in the late 1970s by Niklaus Wirth, the same individual who designed Pascal....
, Modula-2
Modula-2

Modula-2 is a computer programming language invented by Niklaus Wirth at ETH, around 1978, as a successor to his intermediate language Modula. Modula-2 was implemented in 1980 for the Lilith computer, which was commercialized in 1982 by startup company DISER as MC1 and MC2....
 and Oberon. He was also a major part of the design and implementation team for the Lilith
Lilith (computer)

Lilith is the name of custom built workstation using the AMD AMD Am2900 bit-slice Central processing unit by the group of Niklaus Wirth at ETH Z?rich....
 and Oberon
Oberon operating system

Oberon is an operating system, originally developed as part of the NS320xx-based Ceres workstation project; it is written entirely in the Oberon programming language....
 operating systems, and for the Lola
Lola (hardware description language)

Lola is designed to be a simple hardware description language for describing synchronous, digital circuits. Niklaus Wirth developed the language to teach digital design on FPGAs to computer science students while a professor at ETH Z?rich....
 digital hardware design and simulation system. He received the ACM
Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership was approximately 83,000 as of 2007....
 Turing Award
Turing Award

The A. M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community....
 for the development of these languages and in 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the ACM. He designed the simple programming language PL/0
PL/0

There are at least two programming languages known as PL/0. One is a subset of IBM's general-purpose programming language programming language PL/I....
 to illustrate compiler
Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language . The most common reason for wanting to transform source code is to create an executable program....
 design. It has formed the basis for many university compiler design classes.

Notable publications

His article , about the teaching of programming, is considered to be a classic text in software engineering
Software engineering

Software engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches....
. In 1975 he wrote the book Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs
Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs

Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs is a book written by Niklaus Wirth covering some of the fundamental topics of computer programming. The book was published by Prentice-Hall in 1976 and is one of the most influential computer science books of the time....
, which gained wide recognition and is still useful today.

Wirth's law

In 1995, he popularized the adage now known as Wirth's law
Wirth's law

Wirth's law in computing is the adage made popular by Niklaus Wirth in 1995: Wirth attributed the saying to Martin Reiser, who, in the preface to his book...
: "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware
Hardware

Hardware is a general term that refers to the physical cultural artifacts of a technology. It may also mean the physical components of a computer system, in the form of computer hardware....
 becomes faster." In his 1995 paper A Plea for Lean Software he attributes it to Martin Reiser.

Quotes



See also

  • Extended Backus–Naur form
    Extended Backus–Naur form

    In computer science, Extended Backus?Naur Form is a metasyntax notation used to express context-free grammars: that is, a formal way to describe computer programming languages and other formal languages....
  • Wirth syntax notation
    Wirth syntax notation

    Wirth syntax notation is a metasyntax, that is, a formal way to describe formal languages. Originally proposed by Niklaus Wirth in 1977 as an alternative to Backus-Naur form , it has several advantages over BNF in that it can be defined using itself, it contains an explicit iteration construct, and it avoids the use of an explicit symbol for...
  • Bucky bits
    Bucky bits

    In computing, bucky bit in a binary representation of a character, is a bit that is set by pressing on a computer keyboard additional modifier key, other than ordinary shift key....
  • Wirth's law
    Wirth's law

    Wirth's law in computing is the adage made popular by Niklaus Wirth in 1995: Wirth attributed the saying to Martin Reiser, who, in the preface to his book...


External links

  • at ETH Zürich.
  • at ETH Zürich.
  • , Communications of the ACM
    Communications of the ACM

    Communications of the ACM is the flagship monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery . First published in 1957, CACM is sent to all ACM members, currently numbering about 80,000....
    , 14(4):221–227, April 1971.
  • paper by Niklaus Wirth – also includes short biography.
  • , by László Böszörményi, Jürg Gutknecht, Gustav Pomberger (editors). dpunkt.verlag / Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
    Morgan Kaufmann Publishers

    Morgan Kaufmann Publishers is a San Francisco based book publisher specialized in computer science and engineering.The company was founded in 1984 by publishers Michael B....
    , 2000. ISBN 3-932588-85-1 / ISBN 1-55860-723-4.
  • The book about the Oberon language and Operating System is now available as a PDF file. The PDF file has an additional appendix Ten Years After: From Objects to Components.
  • The book
  • a lot more books in PDF format :