🚀 go-pugleaf

>Answer: There is currently *no* interest in Oberon[-2] from industry. 
>Only Universities, research institutes
>and recreational programmers (hobbiest) show some interest in Oberon.
>

Let's take a simile: you decide to start manufacture of a new automobile in 
direct competition with Ford (chosen at random). You want to take at least as 
big a market share.

How would this be done and what would the product have to offer?

We have plenty of instances of this sort of thing in the UK where however 
excellent the product it just does not displace the brand leader.

A good instance was the sad failure of Philips V2000 video recorders to kill 
VHS, notwithstanding much superior technical performance -- better definition, 
perfect stills, very much longer playtime. Technical excellence counts for 
little which is sad.

Now, if we take a massively successful real world product: Borland C++, what 
would we have to do?

I contend that the product has to offer a _massive_ something which real users 
want and to quote a horrible phrase "want bad".

Really there is very little which C++ or Modula have in the way of difference 
except the ability to be lazy and the coding environment in the case of market 
leader.

Do you seriously expect a C programer to forsake printf() for some verbose 
other set of procedures?
The programmer doesn't want to worry about types right now, sorry, you must.

Perhaps if someone produces a Modula with a much better environment than 
Borland, much better functionality including full Windows programming support, 
excellent debugging, a considerable execution speed improvement, much smaller 
code sizes, etc. etc. and you wonder why it doesn't happen?

Why isn't Modula interactive? I realise this is an implementation issue but it 
could be demanded by a standard.

The next step may be graphical programming and this is almost upon us.

  TC. 
    E-mail: tchannon@black.demon.co.uk or tchannon@cix.compulink.co.uk