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by parshua 894 days ago
I started my first company based on Delphi, which itself was based on Turbo Pascal. Wirth was a great inspiration, and his passing is no small loss. May his work keep inspiring new programmers for generations to come.

One of his quotes: "Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way ('Ni-klows Wirt'), Americans invariably mangle it into 'Nick-les Worth'. This is to say that Europeans call me by name, but Americans call me by value."

2 comments

He was indeed! I wrote my bachelors thesis on bringing modularity to a language for monitoring real time systems and his work, especially on MODULA-2, was a huge source of inspiration.
Wirth must have adopted the quote (how could he not), but it actually goes back to a clever line by someone introducing him at a conference.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38858993

What conference was it? Edit: Nvm, saw your other comment[0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38858993