🚀 go-pugleaf

Farshad Nayeri (nayeri@gte.com) wrote:

: Just some clarifications on Peter's points...

<stuff deleted>

> >    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.

Actually, I compare the SRC Modula-3 to AT&T's 'PCC' in the early days
of C.  It's less of a proprietary system than one with a reference
implementation.  When the ISO decides to standardize Modula-3, they will
start with the way that SRC works so most of the post-standardization
code will have a fighting chance at working without modification.  
Contrast this to Modula-2, where there wasn't a "reference implementation"
so the standard doesn't really resemble ANY pre-ISO implementation and
so code that was written for a pre-ISO compiler doesn't have a prayer of
escaping unmodified.

The moral of the story (for language designers) is:  You need a reference
implementation to illustrate the "right way" of building a translator for
the language, and you need a "standard library" so that programs have some
sort of standard way of interacting with the rest of the universe.

<More stuff deleted>

> > 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.

I believe that the "Oberon system" is a gigantic millstone around the
(admittedly virtual) neck of the Oberon language.  When you tie a
language closely to an operating system, you require not only that the 
programmer adopt adopt both simultaneously, but also that the end user
adopt the operating system to run the applications.  Such things are
highly unlikely.  When you get a system that is as unpopular as the
Oberon system, it is even more unlikely that the language will ever go
anywhere even if it is the world's niftiest language.

Of course, they've come up with a standalone version of Oberon, but when
you leave the Oberon system, Oberon the language becomes pretty much just
another Pascal descendant.