Niklaus Wirth

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

— Niklaus Wirth

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.

— Niklaus Wirth

Go To statement considered harmful.

— Niklaus Wirth

In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensable luxury, but a simple necessity.

— Niklaus Wirth

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

— Niklaus Wirth

... we do not consider it as good engineering practice to consume a resource lavishly just because it happens to be cheap.

— Niklaus Wirth

As a matter of fact, the adaptability of a program to changes in its objectives (often called maintainability) and to changes in its environment (nowadays called portability) can be measured primarily in terms of the degree to which it is neatly structured.

— Niklaus Wirth

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

— Niklaus Wirth

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

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

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

— Niklaus Wirth

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

— Niklaus Wirth

Programming is usually taught by examples.

— Niklaus Wirth

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