[Oberon] Communicating with aliens

[Paul Reed]

Hi Lars,

> Or how about communication? i.e. why doesn't Wirth participate in
> developer discussions regarding languages?
> ...Is [W]irth an alien?

Are you a troll?

Actually, I never considered the alien angle, maybe it explains a lot.  A
benevolent gentle alien race he comes from then...

But seriously, I think maybe you need to consider that he's written an
awful lot of good stuff on his subject, as Bob says, which is still
readily available for all to read (that should be a starting point, rather
than wasting his time with tired, re-hashed discussions which are very
common in computer language design, especially amongst those who have not
implemented one - although I can personally vouch for his patience!).

And that he considers himself retired (if we'll let him!).

And that he was recently treated to a symposium (the contents of which
show the breadth of his influence) in celebration of his 80th birthday.

(Most people in his position would quickly be forgiven for thinking they
had done enough.  Donald Knuth, a slightly younger contemporary,
proclaimed that he stopped responding to emails at the end of 1989 - "I'd
used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is
plenty for one lifetime").

Prof. Wirth closed the symposium by briefly describing his career (several
retrospectives of which he has presented elsewhere) and then went into
detail about Project Oberon and its 2013 update.  The recordings of all
the talks of the symposium are at

http://www.multimedia.ethz.ch/conferences/2014/wirth

HTH,
Paul