I'd like to introduce myself and put in a small 'plug.'
First the intro.
I am Bob Brown. I work for the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC) in
Brisbane, Australia.
I don't use Oberon/F for my work but for keeping me occupied at playtime...
In a former incantation, I used the ETH Oberon variants in my
lecturing/projects. I became convinced of it's value after seeing students
become proficient in it VERY quickly.
I find the simplicity of the language appealing. I mean, which do you trust:
monstrosities like C++ or Ada--which require 1000's of pages of definition and
explanation and clarification, etc. to be able to use--hopefully--correctly,
or a small but powerful and relatively 'clean' language like Oberon which can
be mastered very easily and which has far fewer traps waiting to catch you out.
Look at the sizes of the defining documents for the various languages--would
YOU like to have to build and debug/maintain a compiler for Ada/C(++) or for
Oberon. If we can't get the compiler correct...
At DSTC, we have a number of people working with SmallTalk. I am struck by the
similarity (in aim) between SmallTalk and Oberon(/F). Both aim to provide a
feature-rich, efficient and supportive environment. Both were (are)
ground-breaking languages/environments. and so on. The difference is that I
trust Oberon more than SmallTalk: I ***LIKE*** having a compiler hold my hand
and tell me off occasionally. If I am lazy Oberon will pull me up, SmallTalk
will just assume that I'll get around to fixing things up one day--"after all,
this IS a prototype." C will assume that I meant to do whatever I did. C++
won't QUITE be able to make up it's mind, anyway and so probably won't
complain on the grounds that it doesn't want to bother me with 'unimportant'
warnings!!!
(apologies for the facetiousness!)
I feel that we MUST internalise these two ideas: "small is beautiful" and
"Keep It Simple, Stupid." They are the only way we can combat the growing
complexities of (our working) life.
Enough, now the Plug.
Drop by my "Oberon/F mini-archive" at:
http://www.dstc.edu.au/BDU/staff/bob/Oberon/OberonArch.html
You won't see fancy (slow) graphics, search engines, etc. (remember, KISS!).
You WILL find some useful source-code contributions.
I hope that you will all eventually submit something for the archive: help the
fledgling Oberon/F community grow bigger and stronger!
Look forward to hearing from/working with you all!
BOB
---------------------------------------------------------------
BOB BROWN | Here I am, 'Living The Dream.'
DSTC PTY LTD |
Level 7, Gehrmann Laboratories | Trouble is, I don't know WHOSE
The University of Queensland | dream and what induced it!
QLD 4072 |-------------------------------
Australia | Tel: 61 (7) 3365 4310
bob@dstc.edu.au | FAX: +61 (7) 3365 4311
http://www.dstc.edu.au/ |