4 ms·

My 0.02CHF: I studied at ETHZ from 2008 to 2015, and I've heard about Oberon once or twice back then, and read about it at least twice that much on HN. Never u

My 0.02CHF: I studied at ETHZ from 2008 to 2015, and I've heard about Oberon once or twice back then, and read about it at least twice that much on HN. Never used it, never knew anyone who used it, never knew anyone who worked on it (though I believe the chair had slots for theses available at the time).

bluelu 4y ago
I graduated 2007 at the ETHZ. When I started studying, some student pcs were even running Oberon (no login was required). Only some IT students used them as it was too complicated for students from other departments. They were then later replaced with linux/windows machines. If my memory serves me right, when you bought a laptop through the university neptun program, you had oberon preinstalled too (or at least a dvd to install it) was provided. As for Bertrand Meyer, I also visited his programming class. I still remember that he really focused on invariants, and you had to write each code line basically twice.
- flwidmer 4y ago
  Mandatory reference: https://vole.wtf/coder-serial-killer-quiz/ https://vole.wtf/coder-serial-killer-quiz/ I'm sure everyone who was in his classes played this game :D
- kitsune_ 4y ago
  I just had a flashback, we had to do a weird exercise with hats and long strings between students in Meyer's class when he talked about inheritance.
- Shacklz 4y ago
  > that he really focused on invariants Oh the horror those classes were. Meyer is a great guy, and in hindsight I appreciate his ideas quite a bit. But the idea to take Eiffel for an introductory course, the questionable exercises (being encouraged/forced to write the code twice, once as invariant and once for the actual execution) plus the terrible Eiffel-IDE made those classes very easy to loathe.
  - ThePadawan 4y ago
    I like to look back on my college years and ask myself "well, what did I actually learn". And looking back, "I learned to deal with being completely overwhelmed with shitty tools, questioning if the opposite party has any clue what they're talking about, then had to work out how to pass that class" seems like one of the most useful career skills to pick up in your first year. Who cares about the programming language.
flwidmer 4y ago
I was there from 2006 to 2012. The OS course (I think that's third or fourth semester) was being taught with Active Oberon. Must have been in 2007 or 2008, so might have changed right after. Eiffel, Oberon, Event-B are just the most notable examples of things that we were being taught that have never become mainstream.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Yet those are the kind of things universities are great, one get to learn about technologies that changes one's point of view (ideally), something that self taught or professional schools hardly achieve.
  - ekidd 4y ago
    I think that my ideal CS education would include 3 things: 1. "We're going to ask you to build real software, with real tools, in a group. Even if it's only for one course." 2. "We're going to ask you to do some theory and write some proofs." 3. "We're going to show you some wild stuff that looks like it belongs on an alternate timeline." (3) might be something like Oberon, or Racket, or some eccentric faculty project. Or even just teaching all your CS majors Haskell, if you don't have any genuinely eccentric faculty projects to inflict on students. Innovation is often driven by people who are aware of what might have been.
    - ThePadawan 4y ago
      > Or even just teaching all your CS majors Haskell, if you don't have any genuinely eccentric faculty projects to inflict on students. We got taught Eiffel Freshman year, C and Haskell Sophomore year, and after that, whenever a course used another language (Java, C#, C++), the prof just said "you'll pick it up". (That's leaving out the usual-for-academia-but-still-weird stuff like MATLAB and Verilog)
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Well, that is how CS is mostly taught in European universities, across their software engineering degrees. For those that want CS theory only, there is applied mathematics into computation majors.
Shacklz 4y ago
You probably had some classes with Gutknecht at some point, who apparently contributed significantly to Oberon. That being said, I'm in the same boat as you. I have definitely heard more about Oberon here on HN than at ETHZ.
huerlisi1 4y ago
Did start there in 1999. We had some Oberon exposure, but not that much. There were some workstations upstears in the computer room that did run the OS. Those were almost never occupied... So we simply used them to connect to some Solaris workstations using X forwarding:-)

bluelu 4y ago

I graduated 2007 at the ETHZ. When I started studying, some student pcs were even running Oberon (no login was required). Only some IT students used them as it was too complicated for students from other departments. They were then later replaced with linux/windows machines. If my memory serves me right, when you bought a laptop through the university neptun program, you had oberon preinstalled too (or at least a dvd to install it) was provided. As for Bertrand Meyer, I also visited his programming class. I still remember that he really focused on invariants, and you had to write each code line basically twice.

flwidmer 4y ago
Mandatory reference: https://vole.wtf/coder-serial-killer-quiz/ https://vole.wtf/coder-serial-killer-quiz/ I'm sure everyone who was in his classes played this game :D
kitsune_ 4y ago
I just had a flashback, we had to do a weird exercise with hats and long strings between students in Meyer's class when he talked about inheritance.
Shacklz 4y ago
> that he really focused on invariants Oh the horror those classes were. Meyer is a great guy, and in hindsight I appreciate his ideas quite a bit. But the idea to take Eiffel for an introductory course, the questionable exercises (being encouraged/forced to write the code twice, once as invariant and once for the actual execution) plus the terrible Eiffel-IDE made those classes very easy to loathe.
- ThePadawan 4y ago
  I like to look back on my college years and ask myself "well, what did I actually learn". And looking back, "I learned to deal with being completely overwhelmed with shitty tools, questioning if the opposite party has any clue what they're talking about, then had to work out how to pass that class" seems like one of the most useful career skills to pick up in your first year. Who cares about the programming language.

flwidmer 4y ago

I was there from 2006 to 2012. The OS course (I think that's third or fourth semester) was being taught with Active Oberon. Must have been in 2007 or 2008, so might have changed right after. Eiffel, Oberon, Event-B are just the most notable examples of things that we were being taught that have never become mainstream.

pjmlp 4y ago
Yet those are the kind of things universities are great, one get to learn about technologies that changes one's point of view (ideally), something that self taught or professional schools hardly achieve.
- ekidd 4y ago
  I think that my ideal CS education would include 3 things: 1. "We're going to ask you to build real software, with real tools, in a group. Even if it's only for one course." 2. "We're going to ask you to do some theory and write some proofs." 3. "We're going to show you some wild stuff that looks like it belongs on an alternate timeline." (3) might be something like Oberon, or Racket, or some eccentric faculty project. Or even just teaching all your CS majors Haskell, if you don't have any genuinely eccentric faculty projects to inflict on students. Innovation is often driven by people who are aware of what might have been.
  - ThePadawan 4y ago
    > Or even just teaching all your CS majors Haskell, if you don't have any genuinely eccentric faculty projects to inflict on students. We got taught Eiffel Freshman year, C and Haskell Sophomore year, and after that, whenever a course used another language (Java, C#, C++), the prof just said "you'll pick it up". (That's leaving out the usual-for-academia-but-still-weird stuff like MATLAB and Verilog)
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Well, that is how CS is mostly taught in European universities, across their software engineering degrees. For those that want CS theory only, there is applied mathematics into computation majors.

Shacklz 4y ago

You probably had some classes with Gutknecht at some point, who apparently contributed significantly to Oberon. That being said, I'm in the same boat as you. I have definitely heard more about Oberon here on HN than at ETHZ.

huerlisi1 4y ago

Did start there in 1999. We had some Oberon exposure, but not that much. There were some workstations upstears in the computer room that did run the OS. Those were almost never occupied... So we simply used them to connect to some Solaris workstations using X forwarding:-)