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."
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.
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."