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   Brian Marick (marick@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 05-Jan-2024 03:13:02 JST Brian Marick

   in reply to

   Introducing Wirth at the IFIP Congress (1965), Adriaan van Wijngaarden was apparently the originator of the ultimate programming language burn, which Wirth later would charmingly tell about himself:

   “Whereas Europeans generally pronounce his name the right way ('Nick-louse Veert'), Americans invariably mangle it into 'Nickel's Worth.' This is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value.”

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     Brian Marick (marick@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 05-Jan-2024 03:13:04 JST Brian Marick

     RIP Niklaus Wirth, whose “Program Development by Stepwise Refinement”* made a huge impression on me as a callow youth. It didn’t *work* as a methodology, mind you – as I discovered by trying it out on a largish project – but it prepared me for variations that did work. Explains why I remain a mockist** at heart even though the world has mostly moved on from mocks.

     * https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/362575.362577
     ** https://github.com/marick/Midje/wiki/The-idea-behind-top-down-development

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.