🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <7021@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> seitz@cory.berkely.edu (Matthew Seitz)
 wrties:
>
>        Aren't Modula-3 and Oberon both Wirth-approved replacements for
>Modula-2?  If so, what's the point in developing a standard for a language
>which its own author doesn't support?
>

Modula-3 and Oberon are still research vehicles.  The initial reports
describing these languages appeared in the last fourteen months.
These new languages are not considered replacements for Modula-2, rather
they are the results of recent research.

Modula-3 was developed in jointly by Luca Cardelli, James Donahue, Lucille
Glassman, Mick Jordan, Bill Kalsow, and Greg Nelson at the Systems Research
Center of Digital Equipment Corporation in Palo Alto, California and the
Olivetti Research Center of Ing. C. Olivetti and C., SpA in Menlo Park,
California.

Oberon was developed by N. Wirth at ETH Zurich.

Just this week I got a copy of the M3 report from SRC.  From the
first sentences of the first paragraph of the first chapter:
"Modula-3 descends from Mesa[8], Modula-2[12], Cedar[5], and Modula-2+[9,10].
It also resembles its cousins Object Pascal[11], Oberon[13], and Euclid[6]."

(The first papers on Modula appeared in 1977 with the 3rd edition
of "Programming in Modula-2" by N. Wirth appearing in 1985.
Extensive use of Modula-2 started in 1982/1983 with the distribution
of the RT-11 compilers and the production of many Lilith workstations.)

Professor Wirth has supported the current Modula-2 standardization activity
by replying to inquiries from committee members.  While he and all the other
programming language researchers around the world lead the way to better
tools for writting programs the rest of us must make do with what is
already available.

To a very large degree standards are based on already accepted practice.
Current users and manufacturers of Modula-2 are working to make a standard
Modula-2. Perhaps by the time Modula-2 becomes an ISO standard many places
will be using Modula-3 and have an interest in cooperating to develop a
standard for this new object-oriented programming language.

    Stan Osborne, ana-systems, Foster City, California
    usenet: uunet!dbi!stan  Phone: (415) 341-1768