I believe that both comments are correct, and that it depends on
what approach you are taking. The Oberon/F Forms subsystem is indeed easy
to implement, so if that matches what you want to do it is great. However,
I believe that it is also true that if you want to deal with other objects,
or the elements of the Oberon/F implementation of the Model/Viewer/Controller
system, you must manage a large number of object elements yourself at
a low level. For those with Pascal orientation this form of dealing with
objects is familiar, but really is at a low level. The equivalent in
Delphi, and in Java, is much simpler. I also cannot agree
with the comment about difficulty of dealing with "event loops" in Java.
The facilities to program threads is quit easy in Java. However, I
do agree that programming "hidden" methods for threads is still messy in
Java - but still simpler than full MVC programming in Oberon/F. Which is
of course still much better (IMHO) than in all the other systems and languages
that I know about. That is why I converted to Oberon and Oberon/F a
couple of years ago. But the improvements represented by Java, and
its much wider availability of useful libraries, are also
the reasons why I have not used Oberon/F for many months now. Any day now
I will unsubscribe to this distribution. Even now I peek at comp.lang.oberon
only once ever couple of weeks or so.
Why don't we have a language and system exactly as I would like it. ;-)
Human nature and our glorious diversity. The beauty of Java, before the
hype-masters and band-wagoneers started to try to control it for their own
ends, is that Gosling and company unknowingly (or knowingly?) followed Wirth's
dictum about making it (the language) simple. A language design for highly
reliable programming for toasters (and other devices) using objects is what
came out. As a language (and system) it is astonishingly similar to Oberon,
as was noted (by the few who know Oberon) when it first
came out. Too bad is still looks like C. ;-) See, my love for Pascal syntax
is still showing. If only they had added readability to their syntax rather
than assuming that it would only sell only if it looked like C. ;-)
Sigh.
Bob Hjellming