From: marc@ecrc.de (Marc Bourgois)
Subject: Re: comparing object-oriented platforms
Reply-To: marc@ecrc.de
Organization: European Computer industry Research Centre GmbH.
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 10:22:05 GMT

I think the picture of the different languages got distorted by the 
numerous zealous interventions of the Eifel and (less) the C/C++ people.  

We are active users of modula3 and are (every day more) impressed by:

its good OO characteristics, 
  (though conservative: single inheritance; polymorphism, dynamic binding),
 
 rich library structure(including the trestle lib to construct user     
  interfaces)
 threads (provisions for concurrency was decisive for our decision to take 
  modula3; the libs are reentrant), 

 it has a garbage collector,
 it is free, 
 it has an active newsgroup: comp.lang.modula3, 
 it is open: it can interface to anything that interfaces to C,
 gnu people are working on their implementation

For more information you should read the "Modula-3 Frequently Asked 
Questions (FAQ)" message in the comp.lang.modula3 newsgroup, from which 
follows an excerpt:

>What is Modula-3 ?
>
>   The goal of Modula-3 is to be as simple and safe as it can be while
>   meeting the needs of modern systems programmers.  Instead of
>   exploring new features, we studied the features of the Modula
>   family of languages that have proven themselves in practice and
>   tried to simplify them into a harmonious language.  We found that
>   most of the successful features were aimed at one of two main
>   goals: greater robustness, and a simpler, more systematic type
>   system.
>
>   Modula-3 descends from Mesa, Modula-2, Cedar, and Modula-2+.  It
>   also resembles its cousins Object Pascal, Oberon, and Euclid.
>
>   Modula-3 retains one of Modula-2's most successful features, the
>   provision for explicit interfaces between modules.  It adds objects
>   and classes, exception handling, garbage collection, lightweight
>   processes (or threads), and the isolation of unsafe features.
>
>Where can I get an implementation ?
>
>   There is only one implementation available today.  It has been built
>   by SRC and is available via anonymous ftp from gatekeeper.dec.com in
>   pub/DEC/Modula-3/release.  Contributed software can be found
>   in pub/DEC/Modula-3/contrib.
>
>   The current version, 2.07, implements the language defined in SPwM3.
>   There are versions for the following machines:
>
>        AIX386  IBM PC running AIX/PS2,
>        AP3000  Apollo DN4500 running Domain/OS
>        ARM     Acorn R260 running RISC iX 1.21
>        DS3100  DECstation 3100 and 5000 running Ultrix 4.0 and 4.2
>        HP300   HP 9000/300 running HP-UX 8.0
>        IBMR2   IBM R6000 running AIX 3.1, 
>        IBMRT   IBM RT running IBM/4.3, 
>        NEXT    NeXT running ?
>        SPARC   SPARCstation running SunOS 4.1.x
>        SUN3    SUN3 running SunOS
>        UMAX    Encore Multimax running UMAX 4.3 (R4.1.1)
>        VAX     VAX running Ultrix 3.1
>
>   SRC Modula-3 includes a user manual, compiler, runtime library,
>   some libraries and a few other goodies (see below).
>
>   The compiler generates C as an intermediate language and should be
>   fairly easy to port.  Except for the very lowest levels of the
>   thread implementation, the entire system is written in Modula-3.
>


---
Marc Bourgois
European Computer-Industry Research Centre      Tel. + (49) 89-92699-179
Arabellastr 17, 8000 Muenchen 81. Germany.
Internet: marc@ecrc.de
UUCP: ..unido!ecrc!marc


Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.eiffel