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Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

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Re: Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

#101

Post by pjmlp »

elch wrote: post #94
pjmlp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are overlooking that Oberon is from 1992, and modern versions of Oberon like Active Oberon, do support exceptions and many other modern programming language features that Go designers still ignore to this day. Unfortunately just like the authors did in 1972, they are keen ignoring other languages learnings.

Did you mean the C authors?

Yep,

> Although we entertained occasional thoughts about implementing one of the major languages of the time like Fortran, PL/I, or Algol 68, such a project seemed hopelessly large for our resources: much simpler and smaller tools were called for. All these languages influenced our work, but it was more fun to do things on our own

https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/chist...

And thus systems programming without bounds checking was eventually made mainstream

Re: Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

#102

Post by pjmlp »

musicale wrote: post #100
pjmlp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not directly if I remember correctly, but there are OS formatting tools. Windows IDE tooling for Modula-2, or using something like XEmacs/Emacs or Brief.

> OS formatting tools. Not directly if I remember correctly, but there are OS formatting tools I would call that an extra compiler pass to fix the SHOUTING syntax.

You would have some fun during the days computers only displayed CAPITALISED FONTS!

Re: Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

#103

Post by pjmlp »

musicale wrote: post #99
pjmlp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, like Modula-2 as well. However, people always forget we don't program in Notepad, rather programmer editors that are able to do automatic capitalisation of keywords. It is a non problem, like discussion of parentheses or white space in programming languages that require them.

How does automatic capitalization solve the EMPHASIS problem ? For that matter, how do syntax-aware editors solve the problem of finding significant spaces (Python) or parentheses (Lisp) unintuitive, confusing, or simply unpleasant?

A you problem.

Re: Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

#104

Post by swiftcoder »

cxr wrote: post #98
wk_end wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you're just trolling to make a rhetorical point (apologies if not!), but FWIW: ETH Zurich is one of the most well-regarded technical schools in the world, and arguably the most well-regarded technical school in Europe. It has many famous alumni, including Albert Einstein. I think it's fair to expect most people in tech to be familiar with the big schools in the field, even the ones in Europe, though maybe th…

> even if the reader hadn't heard of ETH Zurich it could be reasonably inferred that ETH Zurich is an academic institution, probably in Zurich, where Oberon was successful. Part of writing is trusting that the reader is a rational person The first sentence of the README says, " This project modernizes the Kernel of Oberon System 3 (version 2.3.7) by migrating it from the original Oberon Boot Loader (OBL, written in a…

> it can be reasonably inferred that "Oberon System 3" is an operating system

"Oberon is an operating system" was indeed evident, but it's also not particularly illuminating. There are dozens of niche operating systems, why do we care about this one in particular? What does it do that other operating systems don't?

Re: Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

#105

Post by pjmlp »

linguae wrote: post #74
MisterTea wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised the top comment on an HN post is someone asking what Oberon is (especially someone who have programmer in their name.) Oberon is not only a programming language, but an entire software and hardware computing system built from the ground up to be as minimal as possible by famed computer scientist Niklaus Wirth. Simple RISC CPU, Oberon compiler, OS And Windowing system. The windowing system was famously…

I'm quite familiar with Project Oberon as a professor who studies operating systems and programming languages, but even though this is Hacker News where many of us are familiar with the project, I'm not surprised that there are also many readers who are not familiar with it, since Oberon does not have the userbase of much more popular programming languages and operating systems, and it's not even covered in many unde…

I got to learn about Oberon in the 1990's, because FCT/UNL degree was quite strong in languages and systems programming, and we had exposure to all kinds of programming languages, I even studied ALGOL type system, with its wonderful "call by name" that you see almost nowhere nowadays, other than as lazy lambdas kind of approach.

Re: Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

#106

Post by lproven »

swiftcoder wrote: post #51

I was about 5 links deep before I figured out what Oberon actually was. A high-level explainer at the top of the readme would be really nice for folks who aren't already familiar with the Oberon ecosystem

The best potted intro I know:

https://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/

A more in-depth look for folks with some comp-sci knowledge:

https://www.scribd.com/document/377504715/Oberon-the-Overloo...

Re: Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

#107

Post by lproven »

swiftcoder wrote: post #104
cxr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even if the reader hadn't heard of ETH Zurich it could be reasonably inferred that ETH Zurich is an academic institution, probably in Zurich, where Oberon was successful. Part of writing is trusting that the reader is a rational person The first sentence of the README says, " This project modernizes the Kernel of Oberon System 3 (version 2.3.7) by migrating it from the original Oberon Boot Loader (OBL, written in a…

> it can be reasonably inferred that "Oberon System 3" is an operating system "Oberon is an operating system" was indeed evident, but it's also not particularly illuminating. There are dozens of niche operating systems, why do we care about this one in particular? What does it do that other operating systems don't?

> "Oberon is an operating system" was indeed evident,

No, it is not evident: this is not correct.

Oberon is bare-metal self-hosted programming system. It is both a language and an OS.

> why do we care about this one in particular?

1. It is the final development in the career of Niklaus Wirth, the creator of Pascal. Pascal is the Wirthian language that had considerable commercial success.

(A dialect called the USCD p-System was one of the original 3 OSes that IBM offered for the PC, for instance. Apple created Object Pascal, and implemented parts of the Lisa and original Mac OSes in it. In the early days of DOS, Borland TurboPascal was one of the leading IDEs, and then when 16-bit Windows achieved commercial success, Borland's Delphi led the way as the most sophisticated Windows IDE.)

2. It's the end of his life's work. Wirth did not stop with Pascal.

The next generation was Modula. It was a bit of a flop, but the successor, Modula-2, was a hugely influential language too. Topspeed Modula-2 was at one time the fastest compiler of all kinds for the PC.

Development did not end there.

Others did Modula-3, not Wirth. He moved on to create Oberon.

3. This is the end of the line of the single most widespread and influential family of programming languages outside of the C world.

> What does it do that other operating systems don't?

Wirth was a keen advocate of small size and simplicity.

https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf

Oberon is one of the smallest simplest compiled languages of all time. It is also an OS, and an ID, and a tiled mouse-controlled windowing system. The core is about 4000 lines of code.

4k LOC.

The entire core OS is smaller than the tiniest trivial shell tool on any FOSS Unix.

It is almost unbelievably tiny, it is fast, and it is self-hosting. It can run bare-metal, on multiple platforms, or as a conventional language under another OS. It has its own GUI. It can interop with other languages. You can, and people do, build complete GUI apps in Oberon.

https://blackboxframework.org/

It may be less well-known than its own ancestors but this is an important, significant language, and the final generation of a very important and very much alive dynasty.

Re: Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

#109

Post by justin66 »

lproven wrote: post #106
swiftcoder wrote: post #51

I was about 5 links deep before I figured out what Oberon actually was. A high-level explainer at the top of the readme would be really nice for folks who aren't already familiar with the Oberon ecosystem

The best potted intro I know: https://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ A more in-depth look for folks with some comp-sci knowledge: https://www.scribd.com/document/377504715/Oberon-the-Overloo...

The latter is lifted from “The School of Niklaus Wirth: The Art of Simplicity,” which is a worthwhile volume for anyone with an interest in this stuff.

Re: Show HN: Oberon System 3 runs natively on Raspberry Pi 3 (with ready SD card)

#110

Post by cxr »

lproven wrote: post #107
swiftcoder wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it can be reasonably inferred that "Oberon System 3" is an operating system "Oberon is an operating system" was indeed evident, but it's also not particularly illuminating. There are dozens of niche operating systems, why do we care about this one in particular? What does it do that other operating systems don't?

> "Oberon is an operating system" was indeed evident, No, it is not evident: this is not correct. Oberon is bare-metal self-hosted programming system. It is both a language and an OS. > why do we care about this one in particular? 1. It is the final development in the career of Niklaus Wirth, the creator of Pascal. Pascal is the Wirthian language that had considerable commercial success. (A dialect called the USCD p-…

> No, it is not evident: this is not correct.

It is evident. It is correct.

You aren't making this any better.

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