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The Oberon+ Programming Language

oberon-lang.github.io

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Re: The Oberon+ Programming Language

#11

Post by cardanome »

sfpotter wrote: post #3

I don’t like how verbose Pascal-like languages are. I don’t want to have to type tons of keywords to get anything done. Curly brackets are a big improvement over pairs of “begin” and “end” all over. Makes it hard to see the forest for the trees when skimming some code to figure out what it does. That on its own makes something like this a complete nonstarter for me, leaving aside issues like support, quality of imple…

For me, "begin" and "end" are actually much more comfortable to type, because I don't have too move my hands for that, I can stay pretty much on the home row. Curly Braces are way too far on the right top to do that and then you either have to use you weak fingers or move quite a bit.

(Granted I am touch typing and also using Colemak layout, so rarely ever move my hands. For people that hunt and pek, I believe curly braces are easier to type.)

I don't think there is much practical difference between curly-braced vs keyboard based syntax. Both are similarly easy to read, especially with syntax highlighting. After a while, your brain will automatically parse "begin" and "end" as a symbol, same as curly braces, so you won't notice the "noise".

As for the pros and cons:

Pascal style syntax is slightly better for new people learning to program. Learning how to even type those weird curly braces and understanding the difference between all the styles of braces just takes focus away from actually learning how to program.

Curly braced C-style syntax is better for people that already know how to program because everyone is already familiar with at least one curly braced language.

Re: The Oberon+ Programming Language

#13

Post by LudwigNagasena »

pjmlp wrote: post #9
sfpotter wrote: post #3

I don’t like how verbose Pascal-like languages are. I don’t want to have to type tons of keywords to get anything done. Curly brackets are a big improvement over pairs of “begin” and “end” all over. Makes it hard to see the forest for the trees when skimming some code to figure out what it does. That on its own makes something like this a complete nonstarter for me, leaving aside issues like support, quality of imple…

Code is read much more times than written, and hieroglyphs don't help.

Ad hoc hieroglyphs that change from project to project indeed make it harder to read code. But as long as they are the core part of the language and they represent orthogonal features (ie they don’t bloat the number of ways you can represent identical solutions), I don’t see why it should be a problem. On the contrary, putting less visual weight on tokens with smaller information content looks natural.

Re: The Oberon+ Programming Language

#14

Post by timbit42 »

sfpotter wrote: post #3

I don’t like how verbose Pascal-like languages are. I don’t want to have to type tons of keywords to get anything done. Curly brackets are a big improvement over pairs of “begin” and “end” all over. Makes it hard to see the forest for the trees when skimming some code to figure out what it does. That on its own makes something like this a complete nonstarter for me, leaving aside issues like support, quality of imple…

Pascal required BEGIN and END for every block, such as: IF THEN BEGIN END ELSE BEGIN END END, but Modula-2 and Oberon don't require BEGIN or END around code blocks: IF THEN ELSE END. BEGIN is now only used to denote the end of variable declaration and the beginning of the code. You can see this if you click the posted link. I think it was a valid complaint in Pascal, but not in it's derived languages.

Re: The Oberon+ Programming Language

#15

Post by jhbadger »

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #12

For anyone wondering about the funky asterisk against some of those identifiers, the docs say: An identifier declared in a module block may be followed by an export mark (* or -) in its declaration to indicate that it is exported

This is from normal traditional Oberon, however.

Re: The Oberon+ Programming Language

#16

Post by zabzonk »

cardanome wrote: post #11
sfpotter wrote: post #3

I don’t like how verbose Pascal-like languages are. I don’t want to have to type tons of keywords to get anything done. Curly brackets are a big improvement over pairs of “begin” and “end” all over. Makes it hard to see the forest for the trees when skimming some code to figure out what it does. That on its own makes something like this a complete nonstarter for me, leaving aside issues like support, quality of imple…

For me, "begin" and "end" are actually much more comfortable to type, because I don't have too move my hands for that, I can stay pretty much on the home row. Curly Braces are way too far on the right top to do that and then you either have to use you weak fingers or move quite a bit. (Granted I am touch typing and also using Colemak layout, so rarely ever move my hands. For people that hunt and pek, I believe curly…

> because everyone is already familiar with at least one curly braced language.

so, logically, they must have learned how to use {} in the first place, probably with few problems.

i have taught god-knows how many people c and c++ (used to be a commercial trainer for those languages) and i can assure you that very, very few, if any, had problems with {}.

Re: The Oberon+ Programming Language

#17

Post by zabzonk »

pjmlp wrote: post #9
sfpotter wrote: post #3

I don’t like how verbose Pascal-like languages are. I don’t want to have to type tons of keywords to get anything done. Curly brackets are a big improvement over pairs of “begin” and “end” all over. Makes it hard to see the forest for the trees when skimming some code to figure out what it does. That on its own makes something like this a complete nonstarter for me, leaving aside issues like support, quality of imple…

Code is read much more times than written, and hieroglyphs don't help.

so, you recommend cobol?

Re: The Oberon+ Programming Language

#18

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

Oberon and Oberon+ are very interesting and are certainly a step forward from Pascal. Wish Oberon+ had moved forward a few more steps, like making everything an expression, for example, or more lax variable declaration rules (which probably require scoping rules changes).

If only the FPC compiler supported it and allowed combining units in Oberon with Pascal ones in one project!

The language specs: https://github.com/oberon-lang/specification/blob/master/The...

Re: The Oberon+ Programming Language

#19

Post by iroddis »

cardanome wrote: post #11
sfpotter wrote: post #3

I don’t like how verbose Pascal-like languages are. I don’t want to have to type tons of keywords to get anything done. Curly brackets are a big improvement over pairs of “begin” and “end” all over. Makes it hard to see the forest for the trees when skimming some code to figure out what it does. That on its own makes something like this a complete nonstarter for me, leaving aside issues like support, quality of imple…

For me, "begin" and "end" are actually much more comfortable to type, because I don't have too move my hands for that, I can stay pretty much on the home row. Curly Braces are way too far on the right top to do that and then you either have to use you weak fingers or move quite a bit. (Granted I am touch typing and also using Colemak layout, so rarely ever move my hands. For people that hunt and pek, I believe curly…

I also find curly braces/parens/etc annoying to type, but recently had my mind blown when I saw a typing tutor program that recommended using left-shift to create those characters.

For 35+ years I’ve been using right-shift for things on the right side of the board, cranking my hand and stretching my fingers and complaining about programming languages with poor typing ergonomics.

It’s taking forever to break the habit, but so far it feels so much better.

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