Niklaus Wirth, the inventor of the Pascal programming language, author of "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs", and more, passed away on January 1.
Wirth's law, named after him, is an adage which states that software gets slower more rapidly than hardware gets faster.
@shawnhooper I read once that he said that Europeans passed him by reference (pronouncing his name correctly) while Americans pass him by value (pronouncing it as "Nickel's Worth")
@shawnhooper I have a copy of Niklaus Wirth's book, "Programming in MODULA-2". One fun quote from it is the following gem:
After all, complicated tasks usually do inherently require complex algorithms, and this implies a myriad of details. And the details are the jungle in which the devil hides.
The only salvation lies in structure.
If only more people wrote like that! (Page 86 of my printed copy, but
Google suggests Page 89, possibly due to counting unnumbered pages)
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