My other favorite Wirth joke (I believe he coined himself) plays fun with the pronunciation of his name:

You can call me by name… VEERTH or by value… WORTH.

 

 

From: TUHS [mailto:tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org] On Behalf Of Dan Cross
Sent: Thursday, June 8, 2017 9:46 AM
To: Michael Kjörling
Cc: TUHS main list
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Array index history

 

On Thu, Jun 8, 2017 at 8:56 AM, Michael Kjörling <michael@kjorling.se> wrote:

On 8 Jun 2017 08:49 -0400, from ches@cheswick.com (William Cheswick):
> When he tests a microphone, Don Knuth says:
>
> “Testing zero, one, two.”

As opposed to Niklaus Wirth, who presumably would rather say:

"Testing lower bound, lower bound plus one, lower bound plus two."

 

"Testing: the set N, defined so that there are some elements 'b' and 'e' in N with known values taken from the integers and such that b less than or equal 'e' and every other element is both the natural successor of an element in N and less than or equal to 'e'."