🚀 go-pugleaf

Just some clarifications on Peter's points...

>    Modula-3 has some good ideas but because of the way it was
>    developed it's almost a proprietary product which might or might
>    not be ported to other platforms.  

Sources for the full SRC Modula-3 compiler have been available since
the begining of Modula-3's life (I think 6 years or so now.) I am not
sure what you mean by "might or might not be ported to other
platforms". Last time I checked Modula-3 ran on 25 or so platforms
including almost every major platform out there.

> 2. Garbage collection.  This is an issue for me, might not be
>    an issue for others.  I work in real-time applications where
>    it's not all that safe to have garbage collection going on
>    behind the scenes.  I know there are ways to turn it off,
>    but if you do that then you throw away some of the better
>    features of Modula-3 and might as well stick to Modula-2.

For most tasks SRC Modula-3's garbage collector does fine. Real-time
is a very fuzzy word. It is easier if you explain what sort of thing
you are trying to do. If you'd like to know about people's experiences
with doing "real-time" tasks like serving video or Columbia
University's Augmented Reality prototype, both written in Modula-3, we
can talk about them. Modula-3 was also good enough to be the basis for
an University of Washington SPIN extensible OS microkernel that
outperforms OSF/1 and Mach.

I think all these tasks are considered "real-time" in some circles.

See the Modula-3 Home Page for more information on the above topics.

> 3. Oberon was designed in such a way that it's not just a
>    language, it's a language plus something like an operating
>    system. 

Modula-3 is designed so that it can be built either as a standalone
compiler or an integrated system. SRC Modula-3 compiler is a "systems"
compiler; you can link in C code, etc. Someone can easily build a
Modula-3 environment like Oberon's, but that's another story. Modula-3
is powerful enough so that you don't have to touch your C compiler
again even for bit-twiddling (unless your boss makes you ;-). Same is
not usually true of most of its competitors.

> Modula-3 is something different.  I could accept Modula-3 as a
> genuine upgrade of Modula-2, but it's not going to go anywhere
> unless it gets ported to lots of platforms.

What platforms are you specifically interested? Most commercial
Unixes, Linux, many BSDs, Win/NT/95, and now OS/2 are covered by
Modula-3.  The sources are there and the door is wide open for others
to port Modula-3 to other platforms. You should have a relatively easy
time porting Modula-3 to any OS that supports gcc and has some notion
of threads or virtual timers.

-- Farshad
-- 
Farshad Nayeri
nayeri@gte.com