Father of “Pascal” turns 80

During Niklaus Wirth’s 31 years at ETH Zürich, he developed new programming languages, built Switzerland’s first personal computer (PC), trained the first generation of Swiss programmers and wrote several standard reference works that have since been translated into many different languages. Since retiring 14 years ago, Wirth’s research empire has moved from its location at the heart of the city on the banks of the Limmat River to a workshop in his family home in the Forch mountain pass. His desk is furnished with two monitors and a small desktop computer. Connected to this is a ‘development board’, a circuit board packed with electronics used to modify and program microchips. Over the past two and a half years, Wirth has spent almost every day here working on a new version of Oberon, a programming language he first developed back in 1988 together with the Ceres PC. Since ‘retiring’, hardly a day has gone by that Wirth has not dedicated to programming.

Computers as big as a wardrobe

Wirth was raised in Winterthur and spent his childhood building model airplanes. In 1954, he embarked on a course in electrical engineering at ETH Zurich, where he returned 13 years later. He encountered his first computer in 1960 while doing a Master’s degree in Canada – a mainframe computer the size of a wardrobe. “The machine had to be monitored day and night by a dedicated technician, and whenever I needed it for a calculation it seemed to be in the process of being repaired,” Wirth remembers. His curiosity, however, was piqued; he was eager to learn the workings of this still rare, all-purpose machine and how to improve its functioning. There followed a doctorate at the University of California in Berkeley, which was already using a punch-card computer, but the programming was so complicated that its actual uses remained very limited. The simplification of programming language became the focus of Wirth’s thesis. The result was Algol W, a forerunner of “Pascal”, which later secured Wirth international renown, 12 honorary doctorates and saw his books translated into countless languages, including Russian and Chinese.

Golden age of computer science

Wirth remained in the US for eight years, four of which he spent as Assistant Professor at Stanford University, a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley. This was the era of the Space Race, with everyone rapturous about new technology and president John F. Kennedy proclaiming the moon flights a national priority. The university lacked neither money nor cutting-edge infrastructure and with practically the whole world of computer science still lying undiscovered, scientists revelled in unlimited freedom to carry out their research. In 1967, Wirth returned to Zürich – together with his wife and two children – to take up an Assistant Professorship at the University. “Not an inspiring place for an engineer,” as he now says. At the time, he was ready to go back to the US. But then came a call and the opportunity for the young professor to set up a computer science department together with two mathematics professors. Ultimately, however, it took until 1981 for this trio of computer scientists to develop into a fully-fledged department.

Wirth continued to be inspired by America; on sabbatical in 1976, he visited Xerox PARC, the research department of IT firm Xerox. He was in the right place at the right time: Xerox had just developed its first Alto PC, a compact console with a high-definition screen, keyboard and mouse. “This was more than just a plaything; it allowed us to develop whole new programming languages and compilers.” For Wirth, Alto marked the real dawning of the computer science age. Returning to Zürich, he was convinced that IT research without a powerful computer was redundant. Since such devices were then unknown in Europe, he simply went about building his own. As a skilled electrical engineer, he certainly knew how. This was the foundation stone of Lilith, a PC with a clock speed of 7 MHz and 128 KB of memory. The successor to Pascal, Modula 2, served as the programming language. By 1980, ETH Zurich was already using 20 of these machines; four years on, several hundred were in use across the globe. Lilith should have heralded the birth of the Swiss computer industry, yet, says Wirth, at the time industry interest in his research was less than overwhelming.

Lack of elegant programming

Recent developments in computer science are viewed critically by Wirth: not one programming language developed over the past 20 years has impressed him. Instead he finds them too large and complex, comprehensible only to experts. “Engineers should employ economy and efficiency”, says Wirth. “But because processing power and memory are now available in almost unlimited supplies, these resources are being squandered. Elegant programming has waned in significance.” However, although he admits to being impressed with the power of today’s mini computers, he won’t use a smartphone. “I’m not sure what I would use it for and in any case they are far too complicated to use.” He has also tried a friend’s tablet, but he still prefers to work on his desktop computer with its mouse and large screen. “Building computers is my first priority, using them comes second.”