Re: What's new with Oberon/F?

Guy Laden (laden@math.tau.ac.il)
Sat, 16 Nov 1996 02:01:06 +0200 (GMT+0200)

> However, I've always felt that Oberon Microsystems has spent too much
> effort on the difficult/obscure things and not enough on the
> easy/mainstream things, and I'm a bit dissappointed to see that this
> still evident in your latest e-mail. What I mean by this is that
> you're spending effort on seemingly obscure things like Direct-to-Com,
> SQL database access, the new realtime Portos real-time operating system,

COM integration related activity might be 'difficult' but I think omi's
efforts in that direction can be justified to say the least. As soon as we
can integrate OLE controls in Oberon/F many of the 'easy/mainstream' features
will become readily available to Oberon/F developers as OLE components.
At least I hope so - can Omi confirm this is a feature we can expect to
eventually see?

Regarding the OS - I know absolutly nothing about it but I do know
that there is a need for an OS for the 'network computers' and all
other devices which will be online soon. Sun is working on
JavaOS, AT&T is working on Inferno and doubtless there are countless
others. The Oberon system is based on some design choices which are
highly relevant for an OS for these devices (an obvious example is the
relience on type-safety instead of hardware memory protection). It is
also quite mature compared to the other candidates.
Who knows perhaps Omi have plans on a wider scale than some of us imageine.

> market, or like it has already been suggested, some of us who are using
> Oberon/F right now will be using Java or something else in the years to
> come. :-(

Well, have you seen any 'shrink wrapped' Java applications? (not counting
devloper related stuff) I havent and although I'm sure I will sometime soon
I'm also sure I'll see Oberon applications. In fact, who knows what OLE
applications were produced with the Direct-to-Com product that won the Byte
award.
Btw: Before betting on Java, check out the new kid on the block - Limbo from
at&t (http://inferno.lucent.com/inferno/index.html).
Its from the team which produced Unix and Plan-9, both of which were/are
relatively small and elegant, at least in the state the developers left them.
It also features less buzzwords to learn, at the moment at least.

> Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how many people actually work
> for Oberon Microsystems? It must not be very many if they don't have
> time to develop and respond to e-mail at the same time!

Either that or there are many more questions than the mailing list activity
would lead us to believe. FWIW, I can tell you there are more than 70
subscribers to the list.

Regards,
Guy