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> The whole point of Oberon was the Smalltalk ... Mesa/Cedar like experience. That's not even true if you mean the Oberon OS. The idea - as described in the r
by Rochus 4y ago
> The whole point of Oberon was the Smalltalk ... Mesa/Cedar like experience.
That's not even true if you mean the Oberon OS.
The idea - as described in the referenced HOPL paper - was the focus on the essentials of a language, which from my point of view is still a very valid goal, as you can see by just looking at the success of Go.
Swift, C#, Kotlin are at the other extreme of the spectrum, not too far away from modern C++ or Ada, where the language designers seem to want to integrate everything that anyone could ever want. That makes about as much sense as everyone today thinking they have to drive an SUV, and leave the bicycles or other economical means of transport as "a nice thing to look at" for the "transportation nerds".
- pjmlp 4y agoIt is definitly true for Oberon OS System 3. Oberon-07 isn't it.
- Rochus 4y agoReferences?
- pjmlp 4y agoReferences to what? Worth's quest to reduce Oberon's usability to a language without the libraries and related OS infrastructure that made it interesting to use in first place?
- Rochus 4y agoReferences for your claim that "The whole point of Oberon was the Smalltalk ... Mesa/Cedar like experience." and "It is definitly true for Oberon OS System 3." I was at ETH until 1993 (and then again from 2000 to 2005 for my PhD) and have other information directly from the sources.
- pjmlp 4y agoSo now I have to find a magic paragraph, which as it seems won't change your mind anyway, because "I was there Luke", why bother life is too short.
- Rochus 4y agoNo magic, just facts, Luke; don't search too long; look at the introductory sections of "Project Oberon, The Design of an Operating System and Compiler" (ACM 1992), "The Oberon Companion, A Guide to Using and Programming Oberon System 3" (vdf 1998), and Gutknecht, J (1994): Oberon System 3: Vision of a Future Software Technology, Springer, Software.