Exploring the Legacy of Simplicity in Software Development

English edition [EN]: Niklaus Wirth is one of the computing pioneers and his work inspired many other technologies and a generation of engineers. In this episode I discuss one of his many contributions: the programming language Pascal. And we hear from 3 people who worked and learnt with Pascal in their career: Irving Reid, Todd Jacobs and Charles Forsythe.

Links:

• https://computerhistory.org/profile/niklaus-wirth/
• https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/
• https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/wirth_1025774.cfm Turing Award for N Wirth
• https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/CompilerConstruction/index.html Book on Compiler Construction
• http://pascal.hansotten.com/ucsd-p-system/more-on-p-code/ p-code machines
• http://pascal.hansotten.com/standard-pascal-and-validation/ Standard Pascal
• https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi Delphi
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal UCSD Pascal
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj3DMUn6cck Kathleen Jenssen (co-author of the Pascal book) at the 80th birthday reception for N Wirth
• https://www.fidonet.org Fidonet bulletin board
• http://www.retroarchive.org/swag/index.html Software Archiving group (Pascal)

Not everyone was enamoured with Pascal. Here is a link to B Kernighan's post on 'Pascal...is a toy language' http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html 

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