Oberon System, an OS Written in Oberon | Hacker News Reader

Oberon System, an OS Written in Oberon

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104 pointsDiabloD340 comments

Anyone that likes Wirth line of OS's and languages should check out the Modula-2 revision:

http://modula-2.info/m2r10/pmwiki.php/Project/FAQ

FAQ asks good questions and with rational answers. I'm still going to fight them on uppercase just for sake of adoption and saving pinky fingers. Otherwise, Modula-2 makes a nice C replacement and a start on safer C++ alternative that's easy to grok. The language was originally used in Wirth's and Jurg's first homebrew system, Lilith. I have a link to that and many other Wirth works here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10479213

Anyway, Modula and Oberon have already been used to build a number of maintainable, safer OS's and system software. Oberon did it with a GC for most of it while Modula-2 just tried to be safer about memory management. Very easy to compile & optimize. Adding macros for low-overhead abstractions and a solid stdlib to that would give a differentiator in systems programming without learning curve of Rust or C++.

Go achieved some of this already in application language space. It was a modern attempt on the Oberon programming experience. So, some precedent for my Modula-2 ideas being able to take off. I'll be fine if Modula-2R10 or an Oberon variant ends up a niche language with supported, constantly-enhanced compiler & decent community. It would be another secret weapon for startups like LISP, Ocaml, Haskell, and so on were. This time for systems or embedded use.

http://www.astrobe.com/default.htm

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/pubpg/luv95.pdf

http://www.algo-prog.info/ocapic/web/index.php?id=OCAPIC:OCA...

https://hackage.haskell.org/package/atom

Ooops, maybe again for embedded use. :)

Back in the '80s, I got tasked to implement a prototype distributed OS that a team at JPL had just spent all but a little less than a year of a 5 or 6 year DOD contract designing (with a bit more than 6 months to a big conference where it was supposed to be demoed). After I gave my estimate of what I could produce in the time remaining, the design team said that that was impossible. Modula-2 (embodied in a Logitech(!!) compiler and standard library) came through with flying colors. OS ran on 8 Vax 725's. Pull the plug on one running unique processes, they would restart on another. Ditto for splitting the net.

[0] http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=ht...

As in the Logitech mouse/keyboard company? If so, that makes them more awesome haha.

It's great that you used it to (rescue?) a distributed OS project. Thanks for the paper, too, as some of us collect these for any wisdom that might be lost to time. I'll read it when I have more time.

At that time, Logitech had great developer tools. Their debugger was well known.

Any thoughts on Blackbox?

http://www.oberon.ch/blackbox.html

Answered that here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10793137

Seems great from what people say. Better than Oberon with great tooling. The linked PDF will tell you more. I need to play with it sometime to see what it can do.

Now that's interesting. I used Modula 2 on a PC for some embedded robotics work decades ago, and it was quite useful. If a program compiled, it usually worked. But Modula 2 didn't have objects. Modula 3 did, but it was also garbage-collected, making it undesirable for small-scale embedded work.

This new variant of Modula 2 has objects, in a limited way, and avoids some of the strangeness of Oberon. Is it available for small embedded machines in the Arduino and low-end ARM class? It would be a good choice for when you just need to run some sensors and actuators, and need reliability.

Go is for larger systems, in the large web server class. It does too much implicit allocation and garbage collection for small embedded work.

"Now that's interesting."

I knew you'd like it. It's why I tried to message you in another comment about it.

" Is it available for small embedded machines in the Arduino and low-end ARM class? It would be a good choice for when you just need to run some sensors and actuators, and need reliability."

Good point. I just found it thanks to another HN commenter. I don't know much about the state except to say they're jump starting it with another Modula-2-to-C compiler. I have the source for the original mtc compiler if anyone needs it. Meanwhile, the new one needs skilled contributors.

The language spec itself is in alpha and can use input on its features. They're adding stuff that might help. I'd say now is the time to suggest things that offer safety or maintenance benefits without bloating the language. Anyone you or anyone else can think of. I for one intend to go through Ada and Eiffel looking for every trick they use for safety for internal and integrations. Then, see what can be applied to Modula-2 without ridiculous effort. Design by contract (or a knockoff), existential types, and SCOOP concurrency come to mind immediately. Plus, maybe a formal semantics or a subset to aid static analysis tools or formal verification.

Macro's, too. I want safe (or safe-ish) macros. My old BASIC/LISP-based 4GL had macros for DSL's. They were awesome. So good for portability, security, performance hacks... many things with less overhead or confusion. Let's let people extend the language without punishing them by forcing knowledge of compiler writing.

Whats your thoughts on jumpstarting with a M2-to-C compiler, borrowing from Ada/Eiffel in simpler form, and adding macros?

"Go is for larger systems, in the large web server class. It does too much implicit allocation and garbage collection for small embedded work."

Oh I agree. I was just pointing out they created an Oberon-style language with industrial enhancements to solve problems of Java, etc. It worked with quite a bit of uptake. Like Oberon, the programs are pretty simple, safer, compile fast, and run fast. Old benefits carried over into that application of Wirth style. So, applying it to a system-level language will probably re-create the prior benefits in that area.

Here's Niklaus Wirth's talk about his Project Oberon revival project at his birthday symposium: http://www.multimedia.ethz.ch/conferences/2014/wirth/?doi=10...

I was at that symposium :)

Maybe you also know how to stretch this video full screen?

There are mp4 links in the sidebar: http://replay-progressive.ethz.ch/h264-medium.http/10.3930/E...

Wirth is still tweaking its code, you can follow news here: https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/news.txt

Our first year university computer science course was all done in Oberon. Had to write a small parser et al. I absolutely hated the Oberon interface.

I think the key take away is "had to"...

It's a weird interface. Have you tried A2 Bluebottle? It's in that line but not as bad.

Regardless, I promote it for consistent, system design with safer language that's efficient, portable, compiles fast, and mostly GC'd. Good traits other systems should emulate even if not the extra-weird interface.

Note: One thing about the interface is how it was ahead of the curve on hyperlinks. You can click highlighted text to perform actions and move around in the system. Sound like something that became a ubiquitous interface? ;)

The Oberon interface that I loved was in Oberon microsystems's Oberon F/Component Pascal system, originally available on Mac OS and Windows. Unfortunately, they never brought it from classic Mac OS to OS X, only continuing the Windows development (and eventually abandoning further development of it [but they did open source it]).

Is that interface still preserved in the modern Blackbox on Windows? Found this great presentation on both it and all the concepts it uses for robustness:

http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~skulski/Presentations/BB_Class...

I keep thinking I need to play with it as it looks to be a great tool. Like an engineer's version of Visual Basic 6 I started on. Super easy to use, fast, and code-generating for GUI's without huge issues of C development. The complexity chart was nice while showing good old ALGOL and Turbo Pascal 2.0 fit nicely in the middle. I think the Oberon's are too simple but Component Pascal seems better.

Add Design-by-Contract and some more safety features to give Eiffel + Ada some nice competition in robust, OOP space. :)

Blackbox is much the same, although I much preferred the Mac version. The language is basically Oberon-2, with a few refinements (final declaration and a few others IIRC).

What I liked about Component Pascal was that it extended Oberon-2 to have an OOP model more close to Object Pascal as exposed by Turbo Pascal.

Also their designers were pushing for programming with components, instead of pure OOP. Basically a type safe way of doing COM.

The first edition of "Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming" used mostly Component Pascal examples.

http://www.amazon.com/Component-Software-Object-Oriented-Pro...

It sounds so good that I'd be ready to ditch the opportunity of Modula-2 revision for it if I was an OOP fan. I'm still not convinced it's necessary or even ideal for various tradeoffs. Besides, whether it is or isn't, Modula-2 might be worth reviving just as a C alternative for low-level stuff with more safety. I think investigations into and development of both simultaneously is justified.

You also have the Basic and Pascal compilers from Mikro Elektronika.

http://www.mikroe.com/mikropascal/

http://www.mikroe.com/mikrobasic/

That's great. I didn't know about them. So, that's Pascal, BASIC, and Oberon available for microcontrollers with Mikro in the lead. The other links look like they're a one stop shop. Increases odds that everything integrates well.

Mine too - ETH with Gutknecht? Can't emphasize enough how great the "interclick" mess was.

No, Stellenbosch University 1997. But, yes, maybe I'm just biased to keyboard use, but I never got the appeal of the zealous mouse interface.

For others, read more about the interclick at http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/ethoberon/tutorial/Mouse.html

The best thing I got out of Oberon was the Syntax font (which was the default proportional typeface). It's a really nice font (it's essentially a sans serif font with classic details, hints of serifs, and subtly tapered strokes -- a great antidote to an overdose of Helvetica).

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/syntax/

There sure are some odd articles climbing to #1 on Christmas day on HN.

I think it relates to the audience still online today. It must say something about the interests of the offline people :)

It's actually been quite nice reading, today. All the articles are pretty good!

Does that mean the people chasing fads are off chasing a long-lasting fad while mere rational people are still being rational? ;)

I can't tell.

My hypothesis is that there is a smaller presence of hype-oriented people (usually the majority), to skew off the first-page. Oberon submissions are in a niche that would be quickly overwhelmed on a normal day.

Makes sense. Especially the last part. Might be worth one of those analysis to look at HN submission data on holidays going back years versus what's typical.

Actually, Oberon has a fairly strong support on HN. Here are scores for the last year's Oberon story submissions:

Project Oberon 417 points Fenume 6 months ago 87 comments (http://www.projectoberon.com/)

OberonStation, an Oberon RISC workstation 130 points sinrostro 2 months ago 96 comments (http://oberonstation.x10.mx)

Oberon – The Overlooked Jewel (2000) [pdf] 78 points marsmxm 4 months ago 23 comments (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.90....)

Oberon System, an OS Written in Oberon 46 points DiabloD3 3 hours ago 20 comments (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system))

Project Oberon Emulator in JavaScript and Java 38 points cylinder714 4 months ago 10 comments (http://schierlm.github.io/OberonEmulator/)

Oberon vs. C++ (1994) 26 points networked 9 months ago 18 comments (http://www.modulaware.com/mdlt49.htm)

Oberon operating systems 9 points networked 5 months ago 0 comments (http://www.progtools.org/article.php?name=oberon§ion=compile...)

For perspective, count of stories submitted:

php - 75508

javascript - 39526

python - 38836

ruby - 25275

java - 23527

cobol - 8383

node.js - 6677

c++ - 4858

lisp - 2983

haskell - 2917

scala - 2730

perl - 2479

swift - 2173

c# - 1954

erlang - 1882

modula-2 - 1648

rust - 1277

object-c - 1223

coffeescript - 1136

lua - 713

pascal - 687

f# - 606

ada - 428

typescript - 339

modula-3 - 322

oberon - 243

fortran - 182

golang didn't show up? My thoughts are because of it's name makes it hard to identify correctly, possibly?

Yes, there was too much noise.

It's currently Boxing Day in Australia.

I've written a fair amount of code drinking Oberon. So...

These?

http://www.oberonwines.com/oberon-wines-napa-valley.html

Presumably this:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/287/1094/

Another candidate. Due to simplicity focus, "Oberon Ale is brewed with the only the fewest ingredients." Haha.

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