Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

514 Wirth, NiklausMobile Wireless NetworkingWireless connections can also keep computer users intouch with the Internet and their home office while theytravel. Increasingly, more devices are becoming wirelesscapable while at the same time the functions of handheldcomputers, cell phones, and other devices are being merged(see also portable computers). A new initiative called 3G(third generation) involves the establishment of ubiquitouswireless services that can connect users to the Internet (andthus to one another) from a growing number of locations.Currently, the 3G agenda is further advanced in Europethan in the United States. One problem is that a standardprotocol has not yet emerged. The leading candidatesappear to be GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications),which is used by European cell phone networks, andCDMA (Code Division Multiplexing Access).3G has different speeds ranging from 144 bps for vehicularconnections to 384 kbps for personal handheld devicesto 2 bps for indoor installations. All providers, rangingfrom cell phones to packet (IP) telephony would using astandard billing format and database so that users couldoperate across many sorts of services seamlessly. Anotheralternative is WIMAX, which can be thought of as a widerareaversion of Wifi in which each base station can transmitover up to 50 kilometers. As of 2008 deployment hasbeen slower than anticipated, with widespread coverage inU.S. cities not likely to be available for at least several years.Ultimately, these technologies may bring a Star Trek–like world, with handheld devices that include not onlye-mail and Web browsing capability but a “smart phone,”MP3 music player, and even a digital camera.Further ReadingBriere, Dany, Pat Hurley, and Edward Ferris. Wireless Home Networkingfor Dummies. 2nd ed. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2006.Geier, Eric. Wi-Fi Hotspots: Setting Up Public Wireless InternetAccess. Indianapolis: Cisco Press, 2006.Haley, E. Phil. Over-the-Road Wireless for Dummies. Hoboken, N.J.:Wiley, 2006.Kwok, Yu-Kwong Ricky, and Vincent K. N. Lau. Wireless Internetand Mobile Computing: Interoperability and Performance. NewYork: Wiley, 2007.Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing. Available online.URL: http://www.networkworld.com/topics/wireless.html.Accessed August 23, 2007.Wirth, Niklaus(1934– )SwissComputer ScientistNiklaus Wirth created new programming languages suchas Pascal that helped change the way computer scientistsand programmers thought about their work. His workinfluenced later languages and ways of organizing programresources.Wirth was born on February 15, 1934, in Winterhur,Switzerland. He received a degree in electrical engineeringat the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in 1959,then earned his M.S. at Canada’s Laval University. He wentto the University of California, Berkeley, where he receivedhis Ph.D. in 1963 and taught in the newly founded ComputerScience Department at nearby Stanford University. Bythen he had become involved with computer science andthe design of programming languages.Wirth returned to the ETH in Zurich in 1968, wherehe was appointed a full professor of computer science. Hehad been part of an effort to improve Algol. Although Algoloffered better program structures than earlier languagessuch as FORTRAN, the committee revising the languagehad become bogged down in adding many new features tothe language that would become Algol-68 (see Algol).Wirth believed that adding several ways to do the samething did not improve a language but simply made it harderto understand and less reliable. Between 1968 and 1970,Wirth therefore crafted a new language, Pascal, named afterthe 17th-century mathematician who had built an early calculatingmachine.Pascal required that data be properly defined (see datatypes) and allowed users to define new types of data suchas records (similar to those used in databases). It providedall the necessary control structures (see loop and branchingstatements). Following the new thinking about structuredprogramming (see Dijkstra, Edsger) Pascal retainedthe “unsafe” GOTO statement but discouraged its use.Pascal became the most popular language for teachingprogramming. By the 1980s, versions such as UCSDPascal and later, Borland’s Turbo Pascal were bringingthe benefits of structured programming to desktop computerusers. Meanwhile, Wirth was working on a newlanguage, Modula-2. As the name suggested, the languagefeatured the use of modules, packages of program codethat could be linked to programs to extend their datatypes and functions. Wirth also designed a computerworkstation called Lilith. This powerful machine not onlyran Modula-2; its operating system, device drivers and allother facilities were also implemented in Modula-2 andcould be seamlessly integrated, essentially removing thedistinction between operating system and application programs.Wirth also helped design Modula-3, an object-orientedextension of Modula-2, as well as another language,Oberon, which was originally intended to run in built-incomputers (see embedded systems).Looking back at the development of object-orientedprogramming (OOP), the next paradigm that captured theattention of computer scientists and developers after structuredprogramming, Wirth has noted that OOP isn’t all thatnew. Its ideas (such as encapsulation of data) are largelyimplicit in structured procedural programming, even if itshifted the emphasis to binding functions into objects andallowing new objects to extend (inherit from) earlier ones.But he believes the fundamentals of good programminghaven’t really changed in 30 years. In a 1997 interviewWirth noted that “the woes of Software Engineering are notdue to lack of tools, or proper management, but largely dueto lack of sufficient technical competence. A good designermust rely on experience, on precise, logical thinking; andon pedantic exactness. No magic will do.”