Talk:Oberon (programming language)

message: I don't have the information to correct this, but 
"It also offers an interesting feature which is only recently becoming available in more prominent development systems: exportability of procedures. Imagine that for some program you create a PNG viewer procedure and that you export it: any program on the system will be able to view PNG files merely by calling the viewer! That's true reusability."
is bogus. Code libraries predate Fortran, and shared libraries date back to or before MTS and the late 1960s. CORBA and things like it do this too. I'm sure there's something mildly unique, but I don't know exactly what it is.
: The original remark must have related to Oberon as an operating system, not to Oberon as a programming language on a foreign OS. In the former case, the function is just loaded into memory once and it could have been used in another program, but also from the command line. AFAIK this was and still is unique. Jan272 (talk) 06:12, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: That is more since Ada is more like Modula-2 (Oberon's predecessor) so only the successor to Ada should be compared to Oberon. Jan272 (talk) 06:12, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems with the current aricle -- long list

message: "It has likewise been argued, failure to include a feature may force the programmer to reimplement the feature in his code, causing many people to code the same algorithms, frequently with bugs or inefficently; however, this ignores the concept of libraries. Java is an example of a simple-enough language surrounded by an enormously rich class library."
First place, it's beside the point; Oberon does not have the rich class library. Second place, it's overstating your point; libraries have different strengths than features. There's no enumeration library that's going to do the compile-time checking and clarity and succinty of built-in enumerations. You can't provide templates in a library, either, and emulated templates aren't as type-safe as the real thing. Likewise, libraries don't give compilers as much information as features do; compilers will frequently give awful error messages with the STL because they're seeing the inside of the template rather than the feature.
Also, are you still a simple language if you have a Java-sized standard library? Implementations still have a long row to how, and it's not like it's any easier or less required to learn about a feature if it's stuck away in a library. --Prosfilaes 12:19, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Libraries versus features 

message: I'm posting to the talk page so maybe we can discuss a consensus, instead of back and forth changes.
"Oberon code is typically smaller, and so faster, than equivalent code in many other languages."
Is bullshit. It is absurd to say that Oberon code is typically smaller if you don't specify languages and projects. Likewise, smaller doesn't mean faster. In Code Complete, Steve McConnell shows several functions in C to calculate the integer log base 2 of an integer; the fastest function is the longest. 
Or let's look at Hello, World.
 10 print "Hello, world"
 echo Hello, world
 #include <stdio.h>
 int main (void) {
   printf ("Hello, world\n");
 }
 MODULE HelloWorld;
 IMPORT Out;
 BEGIN
   Out.String("Hello World!");
   Out.Ln;
 END HelloWorld;
Gee, Oberon produces the most code. Do you really think that means that the code will be slowest?
:I suspect the thought here was object code (or machine code depending on the compiler) as opposed to source text. The Wirthian languages do tend to use actual words instead of one character symbols (or an implicit invocation) for such things as variable typing and such. Thus I suspect the strongly felt comment immediately above is skew to the intent of the article text. ww 20:27, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  How much object code is produced is completely compiler-dependent. Also, I don't read that and think "object code". I think source code. In any case, before it is put back in in any form, I'd like to see some evidence that it's correct. Even smaller object code doesn't always imply faster code.--Prosfilaes 04:33, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Smaller=Faster -- not necessarily 

message: Should slim binaries (roughly: dictionary encoded abstract syntax tree of code) get mentioned in the article? See  for a little further info on slim binaries.
Zarutian 01:06, 22 june 2005 (UTC)
:Bad link there. The argument seems to be something along these, not so explicit, lines. Snmall binaries have, all other things being equal, have fewer interdependencies and so lower complication and so fewer opportunities for bugs. Well, not intended ones anyway. Which is the general Wirthian point. True, it's possible to have slim binaries which have pathologically interconnected everything, but that's the situation several sigmas out, the unlikely case. After all, not even close to all C programs qualify for the Obfuscated contest. 
:It's a fair comment to make in WP, though hard to quite explain clearly. With all the refs and such WP tries to insist on. It's a craftsmanlike point, and equally hard to understand. In Pirsig's terms, it's a kind of 'quality'. That took a writer of Pirsig's quality to describe, I don't have such hopes of my own prose... ww 16:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slim Binaries 

message: I've proposed that the 'Oberon-2 article should be merged into this one. My reasons are --
* Oberon-1 was never really much used, and needs only to be mentioned as a historical curiosity
* Oberon-2 is usually called just "Oberon"
* similarly, several articles that ought to link to Oberon-2 are actually linked to this one
* most of the available documentation and implementations are for Oberon-2
* the features that keep Oberon alive only really began with Oberon-2
If you look at the Oberon-2 article, you'll see it's quite short, because once you've discussed Oberon-1, there's not much more to say about it. So, without any negative feelings towards Oberon-1 or -2, I think these two articles should merge; and the Oberon-1 article is larger and better linked into Wikipedia.
What do you guys think?
OrangUtanUK 13:23, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal to Merge

message: Oberon programming language → Oberon (programming language) 
– Conformance with WP naming conventions atanamir
See: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Programming languages/Renaming poll
Oberon-1 → Oberon (programming language) The first version of Oberon is never referred to as 'Oberon-1', just as 'Oberon' (similarly to Modula and Modula-2). Oberon already exists as a WP entry so Oberon (programming language) is the next best option. This is consistent with other Wikipedia entries for languages that have ambiguous general-usage equivalents (e.g. Lisp). It also helps to distinguish Oberon the programming language from Oberon the operating system Chris Burrows (talk) 02:19, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested move

message: A recent edit by Taw included an edit summary noting the article said oberon was not object oriented. As this can be achieved in various ways, including that used by Wirth et al in the design of Oberon, I suggest that this edit is confused as to the underlying facts. And in any case, the article also says plainly the O is object oriented, just not in the C++, Java, or Smalltalk fashion. Comments? ww 05:22, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say that while Oberon supports the practice of OOP, it also supports Imperative programming. It's a component-orientated language, which gives a lot more expressive freedom to the programmer. If I may go all poetical for a moment, the Copernican revolution in programming was the sudden awareness that algorithms should revolve around data and not data around algorithms - an allusion to the discovery that the earth revolves around the sun. But as modern thinkers we should be aware that in fact the sun and the earth revolve around their common centre of gravity, which turns out to be outside the surface of the sun. Likewise, you can't write a decent large software system without understanding BOTH the data and the algorithms. This is an archetypical Niklaus Wirth view - refer to his ancient book "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs" (Wirth, 1975, ). Let us be glad that Oberon is not ONLY an OOP. OrangUtanUK 19:02, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oberon-1 wasn't even the slightiest bit object-oriented. In Oberon-2 there's no message passing, not everything is an object (in particular classes are not objects), polymorphism is limited to class hierarchies, and there's no object-based encapsulation. What it really supports is abstract data types and component-oriented programming (it is pretty much irrelevant whether it's "better" than oop, it's just not oop). It supports a little OOP, but to call it is too much to call it an "object-oriented programming language". Taw 17:51, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree - certainly as far as Oberon-2 is concerned. According to Hanspeter Mössenböck, the driving force behind Oberon-2, "Type-bound procedures together with type extension make Oberon-2 a true object-oriented language with dynamically-bound messages and strong type checking at compile time." Ref: http://www.statlab.uni-heidelberg.de/projects/oberon/kurs/www/Oberon2.OOP.html I recommend that you argue the case with him if you disagree: his contact details are http://www.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at/General/Staff/HM/. In the meantime, please rectify the changes that you made and discuss before making such changes in future. Chris Burrows 23:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: claim that Oberon is not object oriented 

message: I merged the Oberon-2 article in, following what looks like consensus and passive acceptance.
Please feel free to vituperate me ... !
OrangUtanUK 18:49, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Taw: Please change the name of this page and all Oberon-1 references from Oberon-1 back to Oberon again (I would do it if I knew how). Oberon-1 did not, and does not exist. Chris Burrows 00:08, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur with this request. There is an Oberon Report (for what is here referred to as Oberon-1), but not an Oberon-1 Report. The article is thus in error as to the nomenclature of its subject. An awkward position, that, for a WP article. ww 00:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now logged a move request with the administrators for Oberon-1 to be chnaged to Oberon programming language. There are already redirects so I was unable to do it myself.Chris Burrows 12:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merged Oberon-2 article in

message: Obliq is from Modula-3, not Oberon.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.46.21.229 (talk) 23:27, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Obliq is from Modula-3, not Oberon

message: This has been discussed here and elsewhere, but I'm not sure what came about from the discussion.
Can the Oberon-1 and Oberon-2 pages be merged into just an Oberon page? There wasn't really an "Oberon-1", there was just Oberon, and then Oberon-2, and now Oberon-07.  Each of the changes/revisions could just have their own sections.
Bishopmartin (talk) 01:10, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge?

message: Is it really named after the moon, and not the moon's namesake, the King of Elves?
88.159.72.252 (talk) 12:23, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: According to prof Wirth, the language is named after the moon. Period. All in all this is a rather silly discussion, started by someone who dislikes anything else than his (or her) own language. Jan272 (talk) 06:17, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of Oberon 

message: After reading the article through I find myself lacking a lot of elementary information on the language.  I don't know what term Oberon uses for functions  (proc?  function?  subroutine?).  
I don't know if it has record structures or something comparable.  I don't know how its objects differ from those in C++, just that they differ. I don't know whether a language feature must be declared before use, as in Pascal.  I don't know whether arrays of different sizes are considered different types, one of the most criticized features of Pascal, and which most other modern languages try to circumvent.  I don't know if the language supports JAVA-style interfaces.  I don't know what the entry point of the programming is -- a "main" routine as in C?  Sample source code would help, but the only sample source code I've seen was on this Talk page, not in the main article.  In short, this article needs a lot of work.  CharlesTheBold (talk) 01:42, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unanswered questions 

message: The article seems to me to have a POV problem. It sounds like a booster of the language wrote it.--76.169.116.244 (talk) 03:13, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: POV