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I used Modula-2 at Acorn c.1982 (did some development for PANOS), as well as being half of the Acorn team that developed the Acorn ISO Pascal system. I have to

I used Modula-2 at Acorn c.1982 (did some development for PANOS), as well as being half of the Acorn team that developed the Acorn ISO Pascal system. I have to say that to me both languages - straight-up standard (not extended) Pascal and Modula-2 suck! Modula-2 is really just Pascal with modules, which was welcome, but even the ISO Pascal standard mentioned the "external" directive as a common extension to support separate compilation which is 3/4 the benefit of modules (the other 1/4 being the module namespace). Extended versions of both languages such as Borland Turbo Pascal or TopSpeed Modula-2 were great, but it rather damning that the only way to make a language really useful is to extend it ! C, which was around at the same time, was always a much more useful language.

jksmith 4y ago
Agreed TSM2 was a sweet effort, and that green thread traffic light demo was fun to play with.
- kcartlidge 4y ago
  Loved that demo. Still have the code for it. TopSpeed Modula-2 was superb, so much so that even as a college student I bought it - twice, because I damaged the first one.
lproven 4y ago
[Author/submitter here] > Modula-2 is really just Pascal with modules, which was welcome My impression is that Modula was "just Pascal with modules", and Modula-2 is "Pascal with modules and coroutines". (At risk of dramatic over-simplification.) Secondarily, the existence of Modula-2+ and Modula-3 (from 3rd parties) and then Wirth himself moving on to Oberon suggests that while Modula/Modula-2 were not quite there yet, Oberon was at least a lot closer. Although the relative plethora of Oberon variants (Oberon, Oberon-07, Oberon 2, Active Oberon, etc.) suggests that maybe it was still not quite fully evolved. I do wonder if, rather than competing implementations and variants, it would be possible to re-unify them under one standard, in the way that Common Lisp managed to do... even if it were not something quite as minimal and elegant as Prof Wirth would endorse.
- Rochus 4y ago
  > Although the relative plethora of Oberon variants [..] suggests that maybe it was still not quite fully evolved. That's a reasonable conclusion, but one has to consider that most variants came from academia and focused on specific scientific questions, not on the adaptation to practical needs of the industry. > it would be possible to re-unify them under one standard, in the way that Common Lisp managed to do I did that with Oberon+ which unifies Oberon, Oberon-07 and Oberon-2. It also includes what I consider the best ideas of Component Pascal and Active Oberon (though I don't like the syntax of these two languages very much). See https://oberon-lang.github.io/2021/07/15/motivation-for-a-new-oberon-version.html https://oberon-lang.github.io/2021/07/15/motivation-for-a-ne..., https://oberon-lang.github.io/2021/07/16/comparing-oberon+-with-oberon-2-and-07.html https://oberon-lang.github.io/2021/07/16/comparing-oberon+-w... and https://github.com/oberon-lang/specification/blob/master/The_Programming_Language_Oberon%2B.adoc https://github.com/oberon-lang/specification/blob/master/The....
  - lproven 4y ago
    > I did that with Oberon+ which unifies Oberon, Oberon-07 and Oberon-2. Oh I see! But, AIUI, that's just a compiler on other OSes, right? It's the IDE and the OS that interests me. If I wanted to program on Linux or whatever, I'd probably use FreePascal or something. It's the OS and the integration that makes Oberon interesting for me. In a world of sprawling multi-gigabyte OSes implemented in half a dozen languages and held together with sticky tape: various scripting language. One tiny elegant OS, self-hosted in one tiny language, has charm for me.
    - Rochus 4y ago
      > that's just a compiler on other OSes, right? It's possible to run an Oberon System with it (see https://github.com/rochus-keller/OberonSystem https://github.com/rochus-keller/OberonSystem ); it runs on all platforms and the generated C code could even be made run as an OS on an embedded system if need be; I currently also experiment with System 3 and alternative backends; but this is more for curiosity; from my humble point of view the OS topic is solved with Linux (which can also be configured for very low resource systems).

jksmith 4y ago

Agreed TSM2 was a sweet effort, and that green thread traffic light demo was fun to play with.

kcartlidge 4y ago
Loved that demo. Still have the code for it. TopSpeed Modula-2 was superb, so much so that even as a college student I bought it - twice, because I damaged the first one.

lproven 4y ago

[Author/submitter here] > Modula-2 is really just Pascal with modules, which was welcome My impression is that Modula was "just Pascal with modules", and Modula-2 is "Pascal with modules and coroutines". (At risk of dramatic over-simplification.) Secondarily, the existence of Modula-2+ and Modula-3 (from 3rd parties) and then Wirth himself moving on to Oberon suggests that while Modula/Modula-2 were not quite there yet, Oberon was at least a lot closer. Although the relative plethora of Oberon variants (Oberon, Oberon-07, Oberon 2, Active Oberon, etc.) suggests that maybe it was still not quite fully evolved. I do wonder if, rather than competing implementations and variants, it would be possible to re-unify them under one standard, in the way that Common Lisp managed to do... even if it were not something quite as minimal and elegant as Prof Wirth would endorse.

Rochus 4y ago
> Although the relative plethora of Oberon variants [..] suggests that maybe it was still not quite fully evolved. That's a reasonable conclusion, but one has to consider that most variants came from academia and focused on specific scientific questions, not on the adaptation to practical needs of the industry. > it would be possible to re-unify them under one standard, in the way that Common Lisp managed to do I did that with Oberon+ which unifies Oberon, Oberon-07 and Oberon-2. It also includes what I consider the best ideas of Component Pascal and Active Oberon (though I don't like the syntax of these two languages very much). See https://oberon-lang.github.io/2021/07/15/motivation-for-a-new-oberon-version.html https://oberon-lang.github.io/2021/07/15/motivation-for-a-ne..., https://oberon-lang.github.io/2021/07/16/comparing-oberon+-with-oberon-2-and-07.html https://oberon-lang.github.io/2021/07/16/comparing-oberon+-w... and https://github.com/oberon-lang/specification/blob/master/The_Programming_Language_Oberon%2B.adoc https://github.com/oberon-lang/specification/blob/master/The....
- lproven 4y ago
  > I did that with Oberon+ which unifies Oberon, Oberon-07 and Oberon-2. Oh I see! But, AIUI, that's just a compiler on other OSes, right? It's the IDE and the OS that interests me. If I wanted to program on Linux or whatever, I'd probably use FreePascal or something. It's the OS and the integration that makes Oberon interesting for me. In a world of sprawling multi-gigabyte OSes implemented in half a dozen languages and held together with sticky tape: various scripting language. One tiny elegant OS, self-hosted in one tiny language, has charm for me.
  - Rochus 4y ago
    > that's just a compiler on other OSes, right? It's possible to run an Oberon System with it (see https://github.com/rochus-keller/OberonSystem https://github.com/rochus-keller/OberonSystem ); it runs on all platforms and the generated C code could even be made run as an OS on an embedded system if need be; I currently also experiment with System 3 and alternative backends; but this is more for curiosity; from my humble point of view the OS topic is solved with Linux (which can also be configured for very low resource systems).