6 ms·

Oberon is interesting, as is Blackbox/Component Pascal (http://blackboxframework.org/ http://blackboxframework.org/) But it's so niche and windows-centered as

by lstodd 8y ago

Oberon is interesting, as is Blackbox/Component Pascal (http://blackboxframework.org/ http://blackboxframework.org/) But it's so niche and windows-centered as to be almost useless. And the community is microscopic.

pjmlp 8y ago
It was relatively big in European universities during the mid-90's. Former Oberon researchers now work on GraalVM, Go. The Austrian university which collaborates with Oracle Labs on Graal, used to do Oberon research before switching to Java with Sun Labs. Java and .NET kind of killed it.
- lstodd 8y ago
  Interesting tidbit - second generation GLONASS satellites' software is written in Modula-2 running on hardware implementing a subset of VAX ISA Modula-2 being Oberon's predecessor.
lproven 8y ago
The technical claims here are badly incorrect. Oberon is 2 things. It is a language and an OS, or even a family of OSes. Oberon the language has several versions and works on Linux on x86, x86-64, ARM and other platforms, as well as Windows, BSD, Mac OS X, etc. E.g. https://github.com/vishaps/voc https://github.com/vishaps/voc Oberon the OS runs on x86 and RISC5 among others. I am considering attempting an ARM port for Raspberry Pi. So no, it is not at all Windows-centric. One commercial compiler is, but not the language. It is niche but the community seems quite active.
lproven 8y ago
As for the OS, I assembled some links here: https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/46523.html https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/46523.html This is a good overview: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ Oberon, a tiny text-oriented OS, evolved into A2, a graphical OS with a zooming UI called Bluebottle. There's some info about A2/Bluebottle here: http://sage.com.ua/en.shtml?e1l0 http://sage.com.ua/en.shtml?e1l0 Here is the OS on GitHub: https://github.com/btreut/a2 https://github.com/btreut/a2 There are bare-metal versions for x86 -- I am running it on a Thinkpad X200 as well as under VirtualBox -- and also versions that run hosted on Windows, 32-bit and 64-bit Linux and Mac OS X.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  My website has a long article with A2 running and screenshots for all delivered apps. Also wort mentioning that Active Oberon has the language features that Oberon lacked for manual memory management in unsafe code and co-routines in the form of active objects, hence its name. Paco (Active Oberon's compiler) is probably one of the first compilers with parallel phases.
lproven 8y ago
Perhaps the seminal academic paper is "Oberon - the Overlooked Jewel" by Michael Franz of University of California at Irvine. A PDF is here: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d48b/ecdaf5c3d962e2778f804e8c64d292de408b.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d48b/ecdaf5c3d962e2778f804e... This is essential reading to understand its relevance in computer science.
- mlinksva 8y ago
  Interesting read! When/how were Oberon systems phased out and replaced (I assume they have been) at the Institute for Computer Systems? It seems to still exist: http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/ http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/

by lstodd 8y ago

pjmlp 8y ago

It was relatively big in European universities during the mid-90's. Former Oberon researchers now work on GraalVM, Go. The Austrian university which collaborates with Oracle Labs on Graal, used to do Oberon research before switching to Java with Sun Labs. Java and .NET kind of killed it.

lstodd 8y ago
Interesting tidbit - second generation GLONASS satellites' software is written in Modula-2 running on hardware implementing a subset of VAX ISA Modula-2 being Oberon's predecessor.

lproven 8y ago

The technical claims here are badly incorrect. Oberon is 2 things. It is a language and an OS, or even a family of OSes. Oberon the language has several versions and works on Linux on x86, x86-64, ARM and other platforms, as well as Windows, BSD, Mac OS X, etc. E.g. https://github.com/vishaps/voc https://github.com/vishaps/voc Oberon the OS runs on x86 and RISC5 among others. I am considering attempting an ARM port for Raspberry Pi. So no, it is not at all Windows-centric. One commercial compiler is, but not the language. It is niche but the community seems quite active.

lproven 8y ago

As for the OS, I assembled some links here: https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/46523.html https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/46523.html This is a good overview: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ Oberon, a tiny text-oriented OS, evolved into A2, a graphical OS with a zooming UI called Bluebottle. There's some info about A2/Bluebottle here: http://sage.com.ua/en.shtml?e1l0 http://sage.com.ua/en.shtml?e1l0 Here is the OS on GitHub: https://github.com/btreut/a2 https://github.com/btreut/a2 There are bare-metal versions for x86 -- I am running it on a Thinkpad X200 as well as under VirtualBox -- and also versions that run hosted on Windows, 32-bit and 64-bit Linux and Mac OS X.

pjmlp 8y ago
My website has a long article with A2 running and screenshots for all delivered apps. Also wort mentioning that Active Oberon has the language features that Oberon lacked for manual memory management in unsafe code and co-routines in the form of active objects, hence its name. Paco (Active Oberon's compiler) is probably one of the first compilers with parallel phases.

lproven 8y ago

Perhaps the seminal academic paper is "Oberon - the Overlooked Jewel" by Michael Franz of University of California at Irvine. A PDF is here: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d48b/ecdaf5c3d962e2778f804e8c64d292de408b.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d48b/ecdaf5c3d962e2778f804e... This is essential reading to understand its relevance in computer science.

mlinksva 8y ago
Interesting read! When/how were Oberon systems phased out and replaced (I assume they have been) at the Institute for Computer Systems? It seems to still exist: http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/ http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/