6 ms·

I'm a former student of his. He was one of the people that made me from a teenager that hacked on his keyboard to get something to run to a seasoned programmer

by bhaak 3y ago

I'm a former student of his. He was one of the people that made me from a teenager that hacked on his keyboard to get something to run to a seasoned programmer that thinks before he codes. Even before I met him at the university I was programming in Oberon because there was a big crowd of programmers doing Wirth languages on the Amiga. He will be missed.

sterlind 3y ago
which languages? I've just restored an Amiga 500 with Workbench 2.1 and I'd love to honor his memory.
- mkesper 3y ago
  Modula2 was available and got used on Amiga. Silly teenager me found such high level languages "cheating" at the time.
  - greggman7 3y ago
    Lords of the Rising Sun was written in Modula2 on the Amiga https://www.google.com/search?q=lords+of+the+rising+sun https://www.google.com/search?q=lords+of+the+rising+sun My understanding (please correct me) is that Turbo Pascal on PC was actually Modula2 ?
    - linsomniac 3y ago
      The recent discussion here about Turbo Pascal commenters said it was written in assembly. Seems to be supported by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal
      - greggman7 3y ago
        I'm not suggesting Turbo Pascal was written in Modula2, I'm saying it implemented Modula2, not Pascal. Modula2 is a superset of Pascal. Pascal never had modules AFAIK but Turbo Pascal did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      No, Borland did have a Modula-2 compiler (where actually Martin Odersky of Scala fame worked on), but they decided to focus on Turbo Pascal and sold it.
    - FabHK 3y ago
      There was a fun break-out clone on the Atari ST, Bolo, that was written in Modula-2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(Breakout_clone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(Breakout_clone) http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-bolo_8775.html http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-bolo_8775.html
- bhaak 3y ago
  At least several Pascal, Modula-2, and Oberon-2 compilers. My very first compiled programming language was Pascal. I got the free "PCQ Pascal" from the Fish disks as I wasn't able to get the C headers from Commodore which I would have needed for doing proper Amiga programming. Likewise later Oberon-A although I don't remember where I got that from. There were also commercial Modula-2 and Oberon-2 compilers. I just found that the Modula-2 compiler was open sourced some years back. https://m2amiga.claudio.ch/ https://m2amiga.claudio.ch/ Aminet has directories for Oberon and Modula-2 related programs: https://aminet.net/dev/obero https://aminet.net/dev/obero and https://aminet.net/dev/m2 https://aminet.net/dev/m2
microtherion 3y ago
I'm also a student of his, and later met him socially on a few occasions as a graduate student (in a different institute). Undergraduate students were all in awe of him, but I got the impression that he did not particularly enjoy teaching them (Unlike other professors, however, he did not try to delegate that part of his responsibilities to his assistants). He seemed to have a good relationship with his graduate students. In his class on compiler construction, he seemed more engaged (the students were already a bit more experienced, and he was iterating the Oberon design at the time). I remember an exchange we had at the oral exam — he asked me to solve the "dangling ELSE" problem in Pascal. I proposed resolving the ambiguity through a refinement of the language grammar. He admitted that this would probably work, but thought it excessively complex and wondered where I got that idea, since he definitely had not taught it, so I confessed that I had seen the idea in the "Dragon Book" (sort of the competition to his own textbook). Ultimately, I realized that he just wanted me to change the language to require an explicit END, as he had done in Modula-2 and Oberon. Socially, he was fun to talk to, had a great store of computer lore, of course. He was also much more tolerant of "heresies" in private than in public, where he came across as somewhat dogmatic. Once, the conversation turned to Perl, which I did not expect him to have anything good to say about. To my surprise, he thought that there was a valid niche for pattern matching / text processing languages (mentioning SNOBOL as an earlier language in this niche).
pjmlp 3y ago
Yes, the Amiga was one of the platforms where Modula-2 had quite a crowd, more so than on the PC, as we got spoiled with Turbo Pascal instead.

by bhaak 3y ago

sterlind 3y ago

which languages? I've just restored an Amiga 500 with Workbench 2.1 and I'd love to honor his memory.

mkesper 3y ago
Modula2 was available and got used on Amiga. Silly teenager me found such high level languages "cheating" at the time.
- greggman7 3y ago
  Lords of the Rising Sun was written in Modula2 on the Amiga https://www.google.com/search?q=lords+of+the+rising+sun https://www.google.com/search?q=lords+of+the+rising+sun My understanding (please correct me) is that Turbo Pascal on PC was actually Modula2 ?
  - linsomniac 3y ago
    The recent discussion here about Turbo Pascal commenters said it was written in assembly. Seems to be supported by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal
    - greggman7 3y ago
      I'm not suggesting Turbo Pascal was written in Modula2, I'm saying it implemented Modula2, not Pascal. Modula2 is a superset of Pascal. Pascal never had modules AFAIK but Turbo Pascal did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    No, Borland did have a Modula-2 compiler (where actually Martin Odersky of Scala fame worked on), but they decided to focus on Turbo Pascal and sold it.
  - FabHK 3y ago
    There was a fun break-out clone on the Atari ST, Bolo, that was written in Modula-2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(Breakout_clone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(Breakout_clone) http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-bolo_8775.html http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-bolo_8775.html
bhaak 3y ago
At least several Pascal, Modula-2, and Oberon-2 compilers. My very first compiled programming language was Pascal. I got the free "PCQ Pascal" from the Fish disks as I wasn't able to get the C headers from Commodore which I would have needed for doing proper Amiga programming. Likewise later Oberon-A although I don't remember where I got that from. There were also commercial Modula-2 and Oberon-2 compilers. I just found that the Modula-2 compiler was open sourced some years back. https://m2amiga.claudio.ch/ https://m2amiga.claudio.ch/ Aminet has directories for Oberon and Modula-2 related programs: https://aminet.net/dev/obero https://aminet.net/dev/obero and https://aminet.net/dev/m2 https://aminet.net/dev/m2

microtherion 3y ago

I'm also a student of his, and later met him socially on a few occasions as a graduate student (in a different institute). Undergraduate students were all in awe of him, but I got the impression that he did not particularly enjoy teaching them (Unlike other professors, however, he did not try to delegate that part of his responsibilities to his assistants). He seemed to have a good relationship with his graduate students. In his class on compiler construction, he seemed more engaged (the students were already a bit more experienced, and he was iterating the Oberon design at the time). I remember an exchange we had at the oral exam — he asked me to solve the "dangling ELSE" problem in Pascal. I proposed resolving the ambiguity through a refinement of the language grammar. He admitted that this would probably work, but thought it excessively complex and wondered where I got that idea, since he definitely had not taught it, so I confessed that I had seen the idea in the "Dragon Book" (sort of the competition to his own textbook). Ultimately, I realized that he just wanted me to change the language to require an explicit END, as he had done in Modula-2 and Oberon. Socially, he was fun to talk to, had a great store of computer lore, of course. He was also much more tolerant of "heresies" in private than in public, where he came across as somewhat dogmatic. Once, the conversation turned to Perl, which I did not expect him to have anything good to say about. To my surprise, he thought that there was a valid niche for pattern matching / text processing languages (mentioning SNOBOL as an earlier language in this niche).

pjmlp 3y ago

Yes, the Amiga was one of the platforms where Modula-2 had quite a crowd, more so than on the PC, as we got spoiled with Turbo Pascal instead.