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Many people like the clunky syntax of Wirth's languages, and have been exceedingly productive in those languages. There's Borland's ObjectPascal products, of c

Many people like the clunky syntax of Wirth's languages, and have been exceedingly productive in those languages. There's Borland's ObjectPascal products, of course (from Turbo to Delphi), which were extremely successful for many years and still survive today. Pascal is nowhere as popular today as in its heyday, but there are people still using Delphi as well as Lazarus, a modern open-source Pascal implementation that's compatible with Delphi. One of the most popular languages right now, Go, is heavily influenced by Modula and Oberon. Go is more complex, and opts for a more C-like syntax, but many of its concepts come directly from those languages. Another nascent language with a heavy ObjectPascal influence is Nim (which was created by a former ObjectPascaler). Ada is another Pascal dialect that is far from dead. Granted, I personally wouldn't want to use these languages today. Go and Nim are taking the programming language evolution further. But this article isn't about using Oberon today.

eukgoekoko 9y ago
Neither the article, nor your comment provide any substantial arguments, why the language itself should be perceived as a "jewel". All you have is just some references to inspiring success stories and an appeal to authority. What is cool about Oberon, really? (Apart your Wirth-fandom)
- Koshkin 9y ago
  > why... "jewel" Worth having a look at.
  - vram22 9y ago
    >> why... "jewel" >Worth having a look at. Nice one, actually :) The main thing people do with jewels is look at them (apart from keeping them as a store of value).
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
Ada is a Pascal dialect? How do you figure? (If you mean "somewhat in the Pascal flavor", I might be able to see it...) A more C-like syntax, with a more Pascal-like semantics, might actually be a reasonable sweet spot. (I think the C syntax won for a reason. It's terser, without being so terse it's unreadable, and therefore gives you higher bandwidth. Most peoples' complaints about C are the semantics, not the syntax - though I'm sure at least some people dislike that too...)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  While Ada is not formally a Pascal dialect, it arguably has more influence from Pascal than from the earlier ALGOL (which also influenced Pascal; it has keywords like PROCEDURE, BEGIN and END) and Simula. A Pascal-family developer can more easily pick up Ada than, say, a C programmer; the Pascal family already has TYPE, VAR, ranges, records, etc. From the 1983 Ada reference manual [1]: Another significant simplification of the design work resulted from earlier experience acquired by several successful Pascal derivatives developed with similar goals. These are the languages Euclid, Lis, Mesa, Modula, and Sue. Many of the key ideas and syntactic forms developed in these languages have counterparts in Ada. Several existing languages such as Algol 68 and Simula, and also recent research languages such as Alphard and Clu, influenced this language in several respects, although to a lesser degree than did the Pascal family. Ada was widely considered as being an evolution of Pascal at the time (e.g. [2]). [1] http://archive.adaic.com/standards/83lrm/html/lrm-01-03.html http://archive.adaic.com/standards/83lrm/html/lrm-01-03.html [2] https://academic.oup.com/comjnl/article-pdf/25/2/248/1080494/250248.pdf https://academic.oup.com/comjnl/article-pdf/25/2/248/1080494...
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  It's Wirthian with sane precedence for the and/or operators.
lispm 9y ago
Don't forget that Apple was a heavy Pascal user in the 80s. Wirth designed Clascal (used with the Apple Lisa computer) for them, which then got morphed into Object Pascal for the Mac. Many applications were written in Object Pascal. Apple developed Lisa Toolkit (an application framework) for Clascal. This was then morphed into MacApp for Object Pascal.
- vram22 9y ago
  Interesting, I remember reading (maybe just the name) Clascal back in the day, did not know that it morphed into Object Pascal or that Wirth worked on it.
cneumuel 9y ago
Not only ADA itself is far from dead. PL/SQL is a descendent of Ada and a niche language used in the Oracle RDBMS, but it has a TIOBE index of 18.

eukgoekoko 9y ago

Neither the article, nor your comment provide any substantial arguments, why the language itself should be perceived as a "jewel". All you have is just some references to inspiring success stories and an appeal to authority. What is cool about Oberon, really? (Apart your Wirth-fandom)

Koshkin 9y ago
> why... "jewel" Worth having a look at.
- vram22 9y ago
  >> why... "jewel" >Worth having a look at. Nice one, actually :) The main thing people do with jewels is look at them (apart from keeping them as a store of value).

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

Ada is a Pascal dialect? How do you figure? (If you mean "somewhat in the Pascal flavor", I might be able to see it...) A more C-like syntax, with a more Pascal-like semantics, might actually be a reasonable sweet spot. (I think the C syntax won for a reason. It's terser, without being so terse it's unreadable, and therefore gives you higher bandwidth. Most peoples' complaints about C are the semantics, not the syntax - though I'm sure at least some people dislike that too...)

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lobster_johnson 9y ago
While Ada is not formally a Pascal dialect, it arguably has more influence from Pascal than from the earlier ALGOL (which also influenced Pascal; it has keywords like PROCEDURE, BEGIN and END) and Simula. A Pascal-family developer can more easily pick up Ada than, say, a C programmer; the Pascal family already has TYPE, VAR, ranges, records, etc. From the 1983 Ada reference manual [1]: Another significant simplification of the design work resulted from earlier experience acquired by several successful Pascal derivatives developed with similar goals. These are the languages Euclid, Lis, Mesa, Modula, and Sue. Many of the key ideas and syntactic forms developed in these languages have counterparts in Ada. Several existing languages such as Algol 68 and Simula, and also recent research languages such as Alphard and Clu, influenced this language in several respects, although to a lesser degree than did the Pascal family. Ada was widely considered as being an evolution of Pascal at the time (e.g. [2]). [1] http://archive.adaic.com/standards/83lrm/html/lrm-01-03.html http://archive.adaic.com/standards/83lrm/html/lrm-01-03.html [2] https://academic.oup.com/comjnl/article-pdf/25/2/248/1080494/250248.pdf https://academic.oup.com/comjnl/article-pdf/25/2/248/1080494...
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
It's Wirthian with sane precedence for the and/or operators.

lispm 9y ago

Don't forget that Apple was a heavy Pascal user in the 80s. Wirth designed Clascal (used with the Apple Lisa computer) for them, which then got morphed into Object Pascal for the Mac. Many applications were written in Object Pascal. Apple developed Lisa Toolkit (an application framework) for Clascal. This was then morphed into MacApp for Object Pascal.

vram22 9y ago
Interesting, I remember reading (maybe just the name) Clascal back in the day, did not know that it morphed into Object Pascal or that Wirth worked on it.

cneumuel 9y ago

Not only ADA itself is far from dead. PL/SQL is a descendent of Ada and a niche language used in the Oracle RDBMS, but it has a TIOBE index of 18.