[nickpsecurity]

Honestly, I found the tradeoffs of it to be the most interesting. It hits an interesting balance of readable, safe, fast compile, and fast runtime. Includes some OOP and concurrency foundations while barely changing the language. Whole platform can fit in one book. You could theoretically understand whole thing and reimplement in language of your choosing. Was esp good when hardware was weaker and more diverse. Also better starting language than C in education as it can be easy at first with difficulty gradually increased with intro of unsafe constructs. Finally, it's seeing some uptake in embedded with Astrobe IDE.

So, that's a quick review. The main one you'll find is older system where A2 Bluebottle is latest. Runs fast, too.

[qwertyuiop924]

Neat.

Yeah, it does look really cool, just verbose. And you say it's easy to implement....

Maybe I can get it running on my gameboy?

I kid. Sort of.

[nickpsecurity]

"Yeah, it does look really cool, just verbose. And you say it's easy to implement...."

It is a compiler and OS. Easy means a different thing in this context versus average usage in software. I'd say vastly easier than trying to understand GCC or Linux. How about that? Also, the original version was done by 2 people and some change. Each port of compiler was done by 1-2 people in relatively short time. Mostly students with basic knowledge in CompSci. Helps it's well-documented.

So, it's not easy as throwing together a web app but can't be ridiculously hard if you take it a piece at a time. The use I had for it, other than learning or pleasure, would be for subversion-resistent, verified-to-assembly builds. It's super easy to learn Oberon with the OS itself straight-forward. People could code it up in a local language, the compiler too, compile those (or hand-done in ASM), and bootstrap into a trusted environment. That can be used to produce the rest with compilers built on top in a memory-safe language that handles foreign code more safely. Better, no patent suits or anything on Wirth-based tech like .NET or Java might get you.

Other than Oberon system, Modula-3 (not Wirth) and Component Pascal (Wirth et al) are most worthwhile to check out in terms of practical languages. BlackBox Component Builder is still in active use with Component Pascal, esp in Russia and Europe. They love it over there since it's got OOP & GUI with Oberon simplicity & safety.

[captbill]

Oberon is mind boggling, in all respects. You can download the emulator (<5mb total). It is SDL2 based so runs like a stand alone app, no VirtualBox or QEMU needed. Then you can get and compile Lola-2, the Verilog pre-processor compiler from Prof. Wirth. Now you can literally compile the RISC5 processor "chip" itself which runs on the FPGA!! Just use the output .v files from Lola-2 and compile with the Xilinx toolchain. Next you can compile the "Oberon OS" quite simply by hand in a few minutes. With a compile script the complete OS compiles in 10 seconds.

Then why not finish off with PICL, the language/compiler for the PIC16. Includes the uploader. All in <700 lines of Oberon code. The best part is the amazing tutorials/documentation. Some amazing finds at Prof Wirths personal site. https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/

This has to be the most jam packed tutorial you could ever hope for: https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/PICL/PIC.pdf

[qwertyuiop924]

Of course. I'm foolish, but not foolish enough to think "easy" compiler/OS equals "easy" webapp. However, I am foolish enough to start any project, although usually not mad enough to finish it once I get an idea of the work involved.

Once again, Oberon looks neat. I am usually not a fan of the Wirthian languages, so I might not enjoy it in the same way I enjoy, say, Python, or Scheme, but it looks interesting.

[nickpsecurity]

"Of course. I'm foolish, but not foolish enough to think "easy" compiler/OS equals "easy" webapp. However, I am foolish enough to start any project, although usually not mad enough to finish it once I get an idea of the work involved."

You and I are appearing to be more similar than I thought on these kinds of things haha.

"Oberon looks neat. I am usually not a fan of the Wirthian languages, so I might not enjoy it in the same way I enjoy, say, Python, or Scheme, but it looks interesting."

In your case, rebooting PreScheme to do a small OS like Oberon or clone of it might be a better take. There's already books on quickly putting together a Scheme compiler. The PreScheme and VLISP papers are pretty detailed. Include some safety features from Clay (C-like) and Carp (Lisp) with Scheme's macros and simplicity. Mock-up assembly language in it so you can code & test it, too, in Scheme with extraction process to real thing.

That combo seems like it would work better for you plus result in at least one deliverable: a PreScheme implementation for system programming whose code was compiled with GCC or LLVM. You might find that useful over time esp if you made syntax compatible with one of your typical, Scheme implementations to port those libraries over easily. Split it between GC'd code and non-GC'd code like Modula-3 did.

[qwertyuiop924]

Seems neat. The original PreScheme is part of S48, which seems to be dead.

Speaking of which, I should probably consider doing that project I was thinking of doing for a while: port SCSH to some other scheme implementations which are actually alive.

So yeah, the trick with doing a prescheme project is that I'd first have to build a PreScheme compiler (with added safety, etc.) and then I'd have to build one that can run on bare metal. The former ought to be possible, especially if I'm targeting C or LLVM (some bits might get a bit rough, but most of Scheme is pretty easy to implement). The latter would perhaps be possible, but making use of it would likely require a more in-depth knowledge of the hardware than I currently possess.

You know, I was joking about porting Oberon to the gameboy, but the GBA is a really well-defined piece of hardware with readily available tooling (which I actually have, because you need it for LSDJ), and a good deal less complexity than a modern x86 machine...

Man, why can't I just write videogames, like the normal people?

Well, my current side project is writing a version of the Tafl-inspired board game Thud that you can play over a network, so I guess I'm already doing that...

[nickpsecurity]

"The former ought to be possible, especially if I'm targeting C or LLVM (some bits might get a bit rough, but most of Scheme is pretty easy to implement)."

That's what they did originally. Should work.

" but the GBA is a really well-defined piece of hardware"

Then do a PreScheme wrapper on it supporting inline or calls to assembly for performance-critical routines. See if you can make the primitives on bottom close to how hardware works for efficiency. The AI research of the 80's indicate it might be able to handle a board game.