[Crinus]

I do not think it is in danger, it already does too many things that make it a complex language. Similar with Object/Free Pascal and to some extent C# and certainly others i cannot think of right now.

These languages are like horses running on a straight line towards maximum complexity. It is just that C++ is at the front right now, but no horse has any inclination of stopping.

[augustk]

The Oberon language is an exception, it goes the other direction.

https://www.miasap.se/obnc/oberon-report.html

[Crinus]

Not an exception really, there are many simple languages and Oberon-07 (the dialect linked) is indeed an extremely simple one. Go is another language that is simple. And of course C (that compiler developers abuse undefined behavior to win artificial benchmark games and making the life of everyone using C for practical purposes miserable is not a problem with the language itself but with the compilers that do such abuse).

EDIT: Scheme too, at least up to R5RS.

[augustk]

What sets Oberon apart is that it has become smaller and simpler over time, something which is not true for the languages you mention.

[Crinus]

This depends on if you see Oberon-07 as a different "version" of Oberon or as a different dialect belonging to the same family. Personally i see it as a different dialect instead of being the same language exactly because it removes functionality and isn't compatible with it.

It may not seem like a big difference, but it becomes more apparent when you consider how different all the Pascal dialects that are out there - some even from Niklaus Wirth himself - are.

Also IMO languages should not break backwards compatibility.

[pjmlp]

For me the best version of it was Active Oberon, but I guess Wirth wouldn't agree given its pursuit for minimalism.

Also I doubt he would bother to any further updates to Oberon-07 (2016 rev). Most likely busy with other matters nowadays.

[atombender]

Wirth — at the age of 85, no less! — is actively working on Oberon stuff, like the compiler. Here's his "news" file, which is up to date as of May 31, 2019:

http://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/news.txt

[hu3]

Isn't Go inspired by Oberon? That would explain some things.

[pjmlp]

Yes, the method syntax comes from Oberon-2, unsafe package is similar to SYSTEM on Oberon.

The rest comes from Limbo (Inferno's userspace language).

Unfortunately it also left a couple of other nice things from those languages.

[dmix]

Are there shops that will take advantage of this stuff by limiting what features they use and following a certain style? For ex would a C++ team use some functional approach or a Rust style approach to ownership etc? Or it always just a mishmash?