Niklaus Wirth died in Zürich on 1st January 2024. He was one of the great pioneers of programming language design, and specifically design of languages for education.

His languages were a huge influence on me, and on my thinking. Pascal was one of the first languages I learned, and Modula-2 and Oberon also opened worlds to me when I understood what lay behind their design.

The Informatics in Education journal has just published a special edition to honour Wirth’s tremendous contribution to our community. I contributed an article to this edition, titled Principles of Educational Programming Language Design.

I invite you to read it; it might be of interest to you if you are interested in programming language history, in the design of programming languages or in programming education.

The entire special edition is worth a look. It contains many other interesting contributions.

In 2002, I had the honour to introduce Wirth’s keynote address at the ITiCSE conference in Aarhus, and to have dinner with him. One of my treasured memories.

Niklaus Wirth and I (in much younger years), at the conference dinner at ITiCSE 2002, in Aarhus

At the ITiCSE 2002 conference dinner (left to right): Michael Kölling, Niklaus Wirth, Michael E Caspersen, David Gries