Dr Wirth inventor of pascal has died at 89

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the legacy of Dr. Niklaus Wirth, the inventor of the Pascal programming language, following his recent passing at the age of 89. Participants reflect on their experiences with Pascal and its impact on their programming education and practices.

Discussion Character

  • Meta-discussion, Historical

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants share personal anecdotes about learning programming languages, noting that Pascal was significant in their development as programmers.
  • One participant contrasts their experience with Pascal to earlier languages like Fortran and BASIC, suggesting that Pascal contributed to better programming habits.
  • A participant recalls teaching programming courses in Pascal and highlights specific features of the language, such as pass-by-value and structured data types.
  • Another participant mentions a humorous quote attributed to Dr. Wirth regarding his name and its pronunciation.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree on the positive influence of Pascal in their programming education, though specific experiences and comparisons to other languages vary.

Contextual Notes

Participants express varying degrees of nostalgia and appreciation for the structured programming concepts introduced by Pascal, but there is no detailed exploration of the technical merits or shortcomings of the language itself.

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Pascal is the second language I learned. It helped me a lot in learning how to structure programs.
 
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DrClaude said:
Pascal is the second language I learned.
Me too. Fortran was my first, first IV, then 77, where I got into "structured programming" using IF / END IF statements and DO / END DO loops that eliminated the need for statement numbers.

So the new stuff for me in Pascal was pass-by-value versus pass-by-reference in functions, structured data types, user-defined data types, etc.

I taught intro programming courses in Pascal during the early/mid 1990s, then switched to C++ until I stopped teaching those courses in the early 2000s.

Dr. Wirth is reported to have once said, "You can call me by name, which is 'Wirth' [pronounced 'veert'], or you can call me by value, which is "Worth".
 
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Similar here, BASIC and FORTRAN despite being completely different were both poor in terms of teaching good coding/programming habits, most of what I know (I am not saying my habits are OK :wink: ) I learned while using Pascal.
 
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