Niklaus Wirth famous quotes

But quality of work can be expected only through personal satisfaction, dedication and enjoyment. In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensible luxury, but a simple necessity.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Work #Simple #Dedication

A good designer must rely on experience, on precise, logic thinking; and on pedantic exactness. No magic will do.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Death #Thinking #Design

Complexity has and will maintain a strong fascination for many people. It is true that we live in a complex world and strive to solve inherently complex problems, which often do require complex mechanisms. However, this should not diminish our desire for elegant solutions, which convince by their clarity and effectiveness. Simple, elegant solutions are more effective, but they are harder to find than complex ones, and they require more time, which we too often believe to be unaffordable
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Strong #Believe #Learning

In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Forever #World #Computer

The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Army #Details #Degrees

Time pressure gradually corrupts an engineer's standard of quality and perfection. It has a detrimental effect on people as well as products
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Perfection #People #Quality

Programming is usually taught by examples.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Taught #Example #Programming

During the process of stepwise refinement, a notation which is natural to the problem in hand should be used as long as possible.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Hands #Long #Problem

Reliable and transparent programs are usually not in the interest of the designer.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Designer #Program #Interest

The possible solutions to a given problem emerge as the leaves of a tree, each node representing a point of deliberation and decision.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Decision #Tree #Problem

I am convinced that there is a need for high quality software, and the time will come when it will be recognized that it is worth investing effort in its development and in using a careful, structured approach based on safe, structured languages.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Time #Effort #Quality

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.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Names #Way #Call Me

A primary cause of complexity is that software vendors uncritically adopt almost any feature that users want.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Want #Causes #Vendors

My duty as a teacher is to train, educate future programmers.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Teacher #Duty #Educate

My being a teacher had a decisive influence on making language and systems as simple as possible so that in my teaching, I could concentrate on the essential issues of programming rather than on details of language and notation.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Teacher #Teaching #Simple

Many people tend to look at programming styles and languages like religions: if you belong to one, you cannot belong to others. But this analogy is another fallacy.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#People #Style #Analogies

It is evidently necessary to generate and test candidates for solutions in some systematic manner.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Tests #Systematic #Solutions

Clearly, programming courses should teach methods of design and construction, and the selected examples should be such that a gradual development can be nicely demonstrated.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Design #Development #Example

But active programming consists of the design of new programs, rather than contemplation of old programs.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Design #Program #Contemplation

Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Faster #Software #Hardware

Prolific programmers contribute to certain disaster.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Disaster #Certain #Software

Programs should be written and polished until they acquire publication quality.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Quality #Program #Should

Our ultimate goal is extensible programming. By this, we mean the construction of hierarchies of modules, each module adding new functionality to the system.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Mean #Goal #Hierarchy

I have never designed a language for its own sake.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Sake #Language

Program construction consists of a sequence of refinement steps.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Steps #Construction #Program

Indeed, the woes of Software Engineering are not due to lack of tools, or proper management, but largely due to lack of sufficient technical competence.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Engineering #Woe #Tools

Go To statement considered harmful.
-- Niklaus Wirth

Professors typically spend their time in meetings about planning, policy, proposals, fund-raising, consulting, interviewing, traveling, and so forth, but spend relatively little time at their drawing boards. As a result, they lose touch with the substance of their rapidly developing subject. They lose the ability to design; they lose sight of what is essential; and they resign themselves to teach academically challenging puzzles.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Sight #Drawing #Design

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Faster #Programming #Software

Nevertheless, I consider OOP as an aspect of programming in the large; that is, as an aspect that logically follows programming in the small and requires sound knowledge of procedural programming.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Sound #Aspect #Programming

Usually its users discover sooner or later that their program does not deliver all the desired results, or worse, that the results requested were not the ones really needed.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Doe #Program #Results

The idea that one might derive satisfaction from his or her successful work, because that work is ingenious, beautiful, or just pleasing, has become ridiculed.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Beautiful #Successful #Ideas

Software development is technical activity conducted by human beings.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Development #Software #Software Development

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. (Or, sometimes known by] Grove [the head of Intel] giveth and Gates [the head of Microsoft] taketh away.)
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Learning #Microsoft #Sometimes

Experience shows that the success of a programming course critically depends on the choice of these examples.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#Choices #Experience #Example

Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling -- the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.
-- Niklaus Wirth

#People #Causes #Admiration