Name: Niklaus (Bucky) Wirth

Born: February 15, 1934, in Winterthur, Switzerland

  • Swiss computer scientist who is known for designing several programming languages, including Pascal.
  • Pioneered several classic topics in Software engineering namely, ALGOL W, Euler, Modula, Modula-2, Oberon, Oberon-2, Oberon-07, and Oberon System.
  • Coined the term double bucky.

Significant publications

  • Theory and Techniques of Compiler Construction (1996).
  • Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs (1975).
  • PASCAL - User Manual and Report. (1974).

Honors and awards

  • ACM Turing Award (1994).
  • Inducted as a Fellow of the ACM (1994).

Quotes

Wirth’s law: “Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.”

“Programming is usually taught by examples.”

Websites

  • Niklaus Wirth personal website