Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
cas.inf.ethz.ch
Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
#2It’s the second time i see this language mentioned on HN. Reading about it made me feel it was coming straight from the 80s, and i must say i didn’t find anything special in its feature set (but i didn’t spend a lot of time). Could anyone provide more info on what makes this language interesting ?
Re: Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
#3[deleted]
Re: Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
#4Compared to the Oberon in http://www.projectoberon.com this is like Oberon++. I mean, it's still a pretty bare bones language, but it has added quite a few fancy features.
Re: Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
#5It’s the second time i see this language mentioned on HN. Reading about it made me feel it was coming straight from the 80s, and i must say i didn’t find anything special in its feature set (but i didn’t spend a lot of time). Could anyone provide more info on what makes this language interesting ?
The language in itself is just a member of the Pascal/Modula family stripped to the minimum while still supporting modules and some form of polymorphic objects. What is interesting is what Wirth et al does with it in the Oberon book (http://www.projectoberon.com): building a complete computing environment (including a kernel, compiler and GUI) running on their own CPU. All in 9000 lines of Oberon code, no C or anything else.
Re: Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
#6(Only tangentially related to the OP, but what the hell.)
Does anyone here have an experience programming in Oberon-07? One of the most interesting features of the language for me is the fact that it doesn't have a BREAK statement. Which means that one must use a form of WHILE for linear searches. Probably to force people to think in terms of structured programming instead of the logic of “hidden GOTOs”. Does it ever bother you? Did you ever had a thought like “Sheesh, this would be so much better with a FOR and a BREAK.”?
Re: Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
#7Could we perhaps link directly to the PDF (at http://cas.inf.ethz.ch/projects/a2/repository/raw/trunk/Lang...)?
Re: Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
#8It’s the second time i see this language mentioned on HN. Reading about it made me feel it was coming straight from the 80s, and i must say i didn’t find anything special in its feature set (but i didn’t spend a lot of time). Could anyone provide more info on what makes this language interesting ?
The language in itself is just a member of the Pascal/Modula family stripped to the minimum while still supporting modules and some form of polymorphic objects. What is interesting is what Wirth et al does with it in the Oberon book ( http://www.projectoberon.com ): building a complete computing environment (including a kernel, compiler and GUI) running on their own CPU. All in 9000 lines of Oberon code, no C or anyt…
See https://github.com/vishaps/voc/ for a compiler.
Re: Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
#9Could we perhaps link directly to the PDF (at http://cas.inf.ethz.ch/projects/a2/repository/raw/trunk/Lang... )?
I posted the link to the overview page, because it provides more information about the PDF not being yet final and where to discuss further the issues until it gets the final seal of approval.
Re: Active Oberon Language Report Update 2019
#10It’s the second time i see this language mentioned on HN. Reading about it made me feel it was coming straight from the 80s, and i must say i didn’t find anything special in its feature set (but i didn’t spend a lot of time). Could anyone provide more info on what makes this language interesting ?
Active Oberon is one of the final evolution paths that started with Mesa/Cedar at Xerox PARC and influenced Wirth's work on Oberon.
A full workstation OS, written in a strong type safe GC enabled systems language, providing UI interactions similar to Lisp and Smalltalk workstations from Xerox and Lisp Machines.
All of this in the mid-90s, where most PC users where still running Windows 3.x on their computers and Amiga was mostly coded in Assembly.
If you want some screenshots and overview of how it used to look like, https://www.progtools.org/article.php?name=oberon§ion=co...