Oberon-2

[WILL]

Well this is true.

[Bijo]

If you're talking about that link I posted: it was not intended to show any mature compilers; just that there's no lack of compilers :)

There's another one called OBC: http://spivey.oriel.ox.ac.uk/mike/obc/
Have it installed, but have hardly tried it out. It looks promising though.

Anybody know anything about Component Pascal?

[Robert Kosek]

Anybody know anything about Component Pascal?

From what I found it is both ugly and unworthy of bearing the name "pascal". It is utterly incompatible with Object/Delphi Pascal to boot.

http://www.answers.com/topic/compone...nitiator=FFANS

[Bijo]

Anybody know anything about Component Pascal?

From what I found it is both ugly and unworthy of bearing the name "pascal". It is utterly incompatible with Object/Delphi Pascal to boot.

http://www.answers.com/topic/compone...nitiator=FFANS

Hmmm, I wouldn't say that myself, though.

From what I see it looks like a logical development of a language of long ago: (first ALGOL, then) Pascal, Object Pascal, Modula, Modula-2, Oberon, Oberon-2, Component Pascal (though it looks a lot like Oberon-2). That list looks like natural development in steps.

ALGOL is forgotten and Pascal took over, and after all these years it's Component Pascal that is the final language by Wirth (though I suspect it might evolve even more).

[JSoftware]

I tried component pascal and didn't like it at all. It was very messy and I couldn't figure out what was going on.

Oberon is an interesting language. Especially the way class methods are declared. It is however sometimes a PITA I would suppose. I tried to get a bit into it yesterday but I failed miserably.

It was like coding some inbreed monster of Java and Visual Basic :cry: (Will, we need a puking smiley!)

[pstudio]

Here's some puking smileys for you








Choose whichever you like

[WILL]

Object Pascal wasn't a creation of Wirth's. At least not the Object part.

In fact it was born out of Apple Computer back in the mid-80s. It was the language of choice for the first Macs. In fact the entire application structure for the Macs were based off the conventions of the early versions of the Object Pascal language. You might even say that the Windows architecture was inspired by the design of Object Pascal. [size=9px](Notice how well the two play together in concept?)[/size]

But anyhow I'm getting off topic so read all about it here: Object Pascal on Wikipedia

It's a fairly accurate document. [size=9px](Considering that any idiot that has an opinion on the matter can contribute. )[/size]

[Bijo]

Yes it does, a DOS-based IDE.:)
I mean modern IDE.

Actually, what I see is a Windows IDE if you use Native XDS (http://www.excelsior-usa.com/xdsx86.html), and it says so on their site. It looks very poor, though... but if that thing's DOS-based then I'm an expert programmer guru :) I'm not interested in IDEs anyway so for me it doesn't really matter.

Too bad you can't -- or maybe it's possible -- to autolink after compiling (command-line). Is there a way? The XDS manual isn't very clear on it.

[Bijo]

However, there are a few things that don't make it my favourite language, for example:
(...)
* Uppercase keywords. Uppercasing keywords was form of manual syntax highlighting, however uppercase words reduce readability (try to read a software license with lots of capitals). Sincereadability of auto syntax highlighted code is so good nowadays, uppercase keywords are seriously outdated.
(...)
* Explicit END keyword instead of begin/end. IMO a solution for a problem that doesn't exist in practise, and requires the introduction of an ugly ELSIF keyword.
(...)

* I've had a go at Modula-2 and in there you also need uppercase keywords. I don't like it. You should be able to choose between upper- and lowercase keywords when you feel like it.

But to address your point about auto syntax highlighting: from what I see many text editors that appear in common use don't support Oberon-2 out of the box. At best I've seen the ConTEXT website that had a user-made downloadable .chl file, but even this is flawed.

I personally like Notepad++ but it has no auto support for Oberon-2, and manually making one is just annoying (even if the language is small).

* I like the END principle and ELSEIF keyword. Maybe that's because I've been fooling around with other languages so much it's just common to me. The BEGIN keyword to me just looks unnecessary, unless it's the beginning of a program.


I personally would give Oberon-2 a try, and it looks like a natural modern development from the old Pascal and others. Reduction of the whole language to make it more advanced in syntax and easier in use. It would also mean no more annoying IF-THEN-ELSE confusion and BEGIN-END verbosity to me (as I automatically try to simulate ELSEIF one way or another).

The more I see from it, the more I want to use it! I don't like the IMPORT keyword though. I prefer the word USES.