RIP: Niklaus Wirth, 89

Outside of the somewhat more hardcore programming geeks, his name will be almost completely unknown. But his impact on computer programming will long outlive him.

He invented Pascal, which begat Delphi. He was involved in the development of Algol. Basically he was one of the seminal forces in developing computer programming languages throughout his career, which was a long one. Borland's Turbo Pascal was a truly revolutionary release back in the Dos days.

Interestingly, he did not intend Pascal as an actual production programming language. He wanted it used as a teaching tool to introduce people to structured programming, which it was very good for.
He intended Oberon language as a programming tool.

I took Pascal twice. The first time, it just didn't click. I probably wasn't quite ready for it, and I don't think the book was that good. But the second time, everything fell into place: great teacher, good book, and more experience under my proverbial belt. And I fell in love with it.

One thing that I thought was absolutely fantastic about Pascal was the assignment operator and the equality operator. In many, many languages, you assign a value to a variable by using the equals symbol, thusly:

A = 1

Commonly described as A equals one. Seems clear, right?

In Pascal, you use the assignment operator:

A := 1

Described as A is assigned the value of one. A little more unambiguous.

In languages that use the equals symbol, when you want to evaluate an expression, you have a problem. In mathematics, you just use the equals symbol to test for equality. But if you're using that symbol as an assignment operator, you're running a risk of confusing the program compiler or messing up the logic of your program.

If you say

if A = 9 then (do stuff)

What are you saying? Do stuff if A = 9, or are you assigning the value of 9 to A, which is a true statement? Many languages started using == to test for equality. Thus you get

if A == 9 then (do stuff)

In Pascal, since you have an assignment operator in the := syntax, you can say

if A = 9 then (do stuff) and it's unambiguous!

I always thought that was syntactically brilliant, and always gave Mr. Wirth great kudos for it.

https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/01/04/0126247/niklaus-wirth-inventor-of-pascal-dies-at-89

Get ready for Windows keyboards to change! First time since 1994.

*sigh* At least it's been a long time since the last one, but it's going to be a rough transition.

Microsoft is taking away the Ctrl key on the right.

In its place will be a key for its CoPilot AI Assistant.

Won't that be just dandy?

The last change was when MS added the Windows key to the Natural Keyboard back in '94. But MS really wants people to use its AI assistant, so what better way than to make a key dedicated to it where people regularly use a normal key?

Here's the kicker: it's possible that it may not be able to be reassigned!

I was reading an article on Dell's new XPS series that's going through a complete refresh for 2024. They all have the new CoPilot key - to the left of the left arrow key - and it is immutable. Cannot be changed. That's definitely going to force a lot of people to retrain muscle memory who are semi-touch typists.

Personally, if they'd tied it to a function key, or left the key reprogrammable - that'd be fine. But if it is indeed not reprogrammable, that's going to be quite an issue!

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/ai-comes-for-your-pcs-keyboard-as-microsoft-adds-dedicated-copilot-key/