6 ms·

Niklaus Wirth, 1934-2024: Geek For Life

212 points by ingve 3y ago

bsimpson 3y ago
I fell down a Wikipedia hole on the earlier discussion about keyboard layouts and learned that the modifier set by modifier keys (command, option, control, hyper…) is called the "bucky bit," where "Bucky" was Niklaus's college nickname. I wanted to share this info with HN, but since TIL post titles aren't welcome here, I wasn't sure the right way to point out _why_ it was interesting. So excuse me for piggy-backing on your post: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucky_bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucky_bit
- rezonant 3y ago
  > I wanted to share this info with HN, but since TIL post titles aren't welcome here, I wasn't sure the right way to point out _why_ it was interesting. It's not that "Today I Learned" specifically is unwelcome, but rather that editorializing titles is frowned upon. I think this applies most when there's a perfectly suitable title to use or the title itself is subjective instead of objective- I don't get the sense that a "Today I Learned" title with a Wikipedia link is particularly shunned[1]. As dang will tell you if you run afoul of editorializing, "If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's." It would seem entirely normal to see "Bucky Bit" as a title for the link, and if you were to post it, a first comment is a perfect spot to mention this relationship. In fact, there's an opportunity right now! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38888008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38888008 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739124
- ksec 3y ago
  I submitted it, I dont see why not as long as you keep the title. It just wont get voted to front page.
tomcam 3y ago
At least professionally, a life beautifully lived.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kragen 3y ago
“I suppose that’s all very well if you don’t know how to design software.” ouch. it's good to be reminded there are ways to do things beyond the ways we know, i suppose (this was wirth's thought on incremental xp-style design, i guess)
- bhaak 3y ago
  I totally see him saying that. :-D First, most software methodologies are for teams. Wirth himself was more concerned with the individual programmer. Second, most software methodologies are for getting at least a constant performance out of teams. Improving the performance is a concern, too, but most and for all a constant performance will enable managers to be able to plan. That's also nothing Wirth would thought about. Wirth would have wanted to get the most out of the individual programmer. Be the best programmer you can be to discover the best design that is inherent to a problem. I can also see how that might be at odds with the idea of incremental design.
  - kragen 3y ago
    i think it's true that xp is for building a team with dependable performance, but i don't think that's true of incremental design in general, and i think what you're saying about 'discovering the best design' is actually backwards incremental design by refactoring is, quite precisely, intended to cope with the situation of not knowing how to design a system at the outset. however, inevitably at the outset you don't understand the problem well enough to discover the best design for solving it. there may exist some problems you understand well enough at the outset to come up with a workable design; there certainly exist others you do not, however wise and talented you are. the workable design consists entirely of things you know will work, and it does something you know is sufficient to solve the problem. sometimes you should do this but it will never give you the best design, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. your initial design will probably do some things that, while sufficient to solve the problem, aren't necessary. the optimal design would avoid spending effort on those things. because you don't know all the things that will work yet, it's likely that the optimal design would incorporate things that you don't know will work at the outset. finally, there are problems you don't understand well enough to even come up with a workable design for, at the outset, but which you can learn enough to solve in the process of solving them and that's what refactoring and incremental design is about: enabling your design to benefit from the things you learn in the process of building your system, so it actually can be the best design for solving the problem
CoastalCoder 3y ago
It's so weird to me that he was already 7 when Pearl Harbor was bombed.
- theanonymousone 3y ago
  I was in a talk of his, where he said "I was a University professor at a time when a byte was 6 bits".
  - lukego 3y ago
    He said that in his youth his colleagues were in awe of him because he was brave enough to give presentations in English. (They were shy and stuck to the local Swiss German dialect.)
  - timbit42 3y ago
    The 8-bit byte didn't become a standard until the IBM System/360 was released with it in 1964.
- devnonymous 3y ago
  What do you mean? Why is it weird? Did you mean to imply that you're surprised that he was old or that Pearl Harbor happened around an average lifetime ago ?
  - throwaway66201 3y ago
    Well my grandfather was born years after that event, so it is kinda surprising, especially considering his profession.
    - layer8 3y ago
      My still-alive father was born before Wirth, and my grandparents were born in the 1800s. Generations can span quite a range.
      - 3y ago
begueradj 3y ago
> “I suppose that’s all very well if you don’t know how to design software.” Could anyone who may have more information elaborate on what Wirth meant by saying this ? Thank you.
- tinco 3y ago
  He's deriding the agile movement. He's saying if you don't know how to properly design software (up front), then he supposes that doing it in an iterative fashion is an acceptable alternative. The way he says it implies that he disapproves of it. In opinions such as this it pays to remind yourself that not everyone is faced with the same challenges. For all the esteem Wirth garners, I feel (at least at that time) his work on compilers and programming language design involves challenges that are very different from the challenges that inspired Extreme Programming.
  - somewhereoutth 3y ago
    And not everyone has the same abilities. Tayloresquece methodologies like Agile are great for getting mediocre results for mediocre projects using mediocre developers (if they are not mediocre to begin with, certainly they will become so) in a repeatable and reportable fashion.
    - zvmaz 3y ago
      > Tayloresquece methodologies like Agile are great for getting mediocre results for mediocre projects using mediocre developers (if they are not mediocre to begin with, certainly they will become so) in a repeatable and reportable fashion Nuanced, humble, and thoughtful opinion. Thank you.
    - rramadass 3y ago
      Ha, Ha! I absolutely love your phrasing! For those who may not know, "Tayloresque" refers to techniques pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor) who introduced "Scientific Management Techniques" to increase worker productivity and efficiency in Factories. To the detriment of Humankind, his methods have been taken as gospel by the larger "Management Industry" from where they have bled into the "Knowledge Management Industry" causing all knowledgeable Software Engineers to rue their jobs/careers/lives.
seanhunter 3y ago
One of my favourity Wirth stories is he came to give a talk at my friend's university and they asked him how to pronounce his surname, whether you say it "wirt" or "worth" and he said "Well you can call me by name or you can call me by value". Apparently it was a joke he used often but as a comp sci dad joke it totally rules.
Aldipower 3y ago
> ..., but all shared the vision of human as crafter & computer as tool (a perspective we would do well to come back to). I feel this.
arkj 3y ago
What makes professor Wirth a unique geek? To be a geek of geeks in computer science you have to write an OS or a Compiler and professor Wirth did both. To top it up he wrote the hardware to run it all. Now that’s when you call someone a king of geeks.
Paul-Craft 3y ago
Wow. I had no literal idea Niklaus Wirth was alive until just now when I learned he died. We've lost a giant of the field already in 2024. This is definitely black bar worthy.

212 points by ingve 3y ago

I fell down a Wikipedia hole on the earlier discussion about keyboard layouts and learned that the modifier set by modifier keys (command, option, control, hyper…) is called the "bucky bit," where "Bucky" was Niklaus's college nickname. I wanted to share this info with HN, but since TIL post titles aren't welcome here, I wasn't sure the right way to point out _why_ it was interesting. So excuse me for piggy-backing on your post: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucky_bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucky_bit

rezonant 3y ago
> I wanted to share this info with HN, but since TIL post titles aren't welcome here, I wasn't sure the right way to point out _why_ it was interesting. It's not that "Today I Learned" specifically is unwelcome, but rather that editorializing titles is frowned upon. I think this applies most when there's a perfectly suitable title to use or the title itself is subjective instead of objective- I don't get the sense that a "Today I Learned" title with a Wikipedia link is particularly shunned[1]. As dang will tell you if you run afoul of editorializing, "If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's." It would seem entirely normal to see "Bucky Bit" as a title for the link, and if you were to post it, a first comment is a perfect spot to mention this relationship. In fact, there's an opportunity right now! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38888008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38888008 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739124
ksec 3y ago
I submitted it, I dont see why not as long as you keep the title. It just wont get voted to front page.

tomcam 3y ago

At least professionally, a life beautifully lived.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

kragen 3y ago

“I suppose that’s all very well if you don’t know how to design software.” ouch. it's good to be reminded there are ways to do things beyond the ways we know, i suppose (this was wirth's thought on incremental xp-style design, i guess)

bhaak 3y ago
I totally see him saying that. :-D First, most software methodologies are for teams. Wirth himself was more concerned with the individual programmer. Second, most software methodologies are for getting at least a constant performance out of teams. Improving the performance is a concern, too, but most and for all a constant performance will enable managers to be able to plan. That's also nothing Wirth would thought about. Wirth would have wanted to get the most out of the individual programmer. Be the best programmer you can be to discover the best design that is inherent to a problem. I can also see how that might be at odds with the idea of incremental design.
- kragen 3y ago
  i think it's true that xp is for building a team with dependable performance, but i don't think that's true of incremental design in general, and i think what you're saying about 'discovering the best design' is actually backwards incremental design by refactoring is, quite precisely, intended to cope with the situation of not knowing how to design a system at the outset. however, inevitably at the outset you don't understand the problem well enough to discover the best design for solving it. there may exist some problems you understand well enough at the outset to come up with a workable design; there certainly exist others you do not, however wise and talented you are. the workable design consists entirely of things you know will work, and it does something you know is sufficient to solve the problem. sometimes you should do this but it will never give you the best design, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. your initial design will probably do some things that, while sufficient to solve the problem, aren't necessary. the optimal design would avoid spending effort on those things. because you don't know all the things that will work yet, it's likely that the optimal design would incorporate things that you don't know will work at the outset. finally, there are problems you don't understand well enough to even come up with a workable design for, at the outset, but which you can learn enough to solve in the process of solving them and that's what refactoring and incremental design is about: enabling your design to benefit from the things you learn in the process of building your system, so it actually can be the best design for solving the problem

CoastalCoder 3y ago

It's so weird to me that he was already 7 when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

theanonymousone 3y ago
I was in a talk of his, where he said "I was a University professor at a time when a byte was 6 bits".
- lukego 3y ago
  He said that in his youth his colleagues were in awe of him because he was brave enough to give presentations in English. (They were shy and stuck to the local Swiss German dialect.)
- timbit42 3y ago
  The 8-bit byte didn't become a standard until the IBM System/360 was released with it in 1964.
devnonymous 3y ago
What do you mean? Why is it weird? Did you mean to imply that you're surprised that he was old or that Pearl Harbor happened around an average lifetime ago ?
- throwaway66201 3y ago
  Well my grandfather was born years after that event, so it is kinda surprising, especially considering his profession.
  - layer8 3y ago
    My still-alive father was born before Wirth, and my grandparents were born in the 1800s. Generations can span quite a range.
    - 3y ago

begueradj 3y ago

> “I suppose that’s all very well if you don’t know how to design software.” Could anyone who may have more information elaborate on what Wirth meant by saying this ? Thank you.

tinco 3y ago
He's deriding the agile movement. He's saying if you don't know how to properly design software (up front), then he supposes that doing it in an iterative fashion is an acceptable alternative. The way he says it implies that he disapproves of it. In opinions such as this it pays to remind yourself that not everyone is faced with the same challenges. For all the esteem Wirth garners, I feel (at least at that time) his work on compilers and programming language design involves challenges that are very different from the challenges that inspired Extreme Programming.
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  And not everyone has the same abilities. Tayloresquece methodologies like Agile are great for getting mediocre results for mediocre projects using mediocre developers (if they are not mediocre to begin with, certainly they will become so) in a repeatable and reportable fashion.
  - zvmaz 3y ago
    > Tayloresquece methodologies like Agile are great for getting mediocre results for mediocre projects using mediocre developers (if they are not mediocre to begin with, certainly they will become so) in a repeatable and reportable fashion Nuanced, humble, and thoughtful opinion. Thank you.
  - rramadass 3y ago
    Ha, Ha! I absolutely love your phrasing! For those who may not know, "Tayloresque" refers to techniques pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor) who introduced "Scientific Management Techniques" to increase worker productivity and efficiency in Factories. To the detriment of Humankind, his methods have been taken as gospel by the larger "Management Industry" from where they have bled into the "Knowledge Management Industry" causing all knowledgeable Software Engineers to rue their jobs/careers/lives.

seanhunter 3y ago

One of my favourity Wirth stories is he came to give a talk at my friend's university and they asked him how to pronounce his surname, whether you say it "wirt" or "worth" and he said "Well you can call me by name or you can call me by value". Apparently it was a joke he used often but as a comp sci dad joke it totally rules.

Aldipower 3y ago

> ..., but all shared the vision of human as crafter & computer as tool (a perspective we would do well to come back to). I feel this.

arkj 3y ago

What makes professor Wirth a unique geek? To be a geek of geeks in computer science you have to write an OS or a Compiler and professor Wirth did both. To top it up he wrote the hardware to run it all. Now that’s when you call someone a king of geeks.

Paul-Craft 3y ago

Wow. I had no literal idea Niklaus Wirth was alive until just now when I learned he died. We've lost a giant of the field already in 2024. This is definitely black bar worthy.