May 2021 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

PO 2013 allows one to "override" predefined procedures and functions
by Andreas Pirklbauer 29 May '21

29 May '21

By contrast, should the following be allowed? MODULE M; VAR ch: CHAR; CHAR: INTEGER; (*this is allowed in PO 2013*) BEGIN CHAR := 1 END M. -ap

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Historical perspective; was Re (2): EE, CE, CS buildings on the ETH campus.
by peter＠easthope.ca 26 May '21

26 May '21

>From David Lightfoot dlightfoot at ........ac.uk Mon May 24 12:22:20 CEST 2021 > Niklaus Wirth's Institute of Computer Systems was on the 4th floor of the > Rechenzentrum, Clausiusstrasse 55; this was the location at the time of the > development of Oberon. > There is a photograph at: > https://www.tg.ethz.ch/de/kontakt/standort/ The story now includes a good color photo. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Oberon#Historical_Perspective David, the details certainly make the story more vivid but if you prefer that your message is not cited in the footnote just let me know; or remove the citation. Thx, ... P.L. -- tel: +1 604 670 0140 Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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Re (2): Re (2): EE, CE, CS buildings on the ETH campus.
by peter＠easthope.ca 24 May '21

24 May '21

From: David Lightfoot <dlightfoot(a)brookes.ac.uk> Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 11:22:20 +0100 > Niklaus Wirth's Institute of Computer Systems was on the 4th floor of the > Rechenzentrum, Clausiusstrasse 55; this was the location at the time of the > development of Oberon. Thanks David. Certainly that helps. Working on the photo. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#ETHZ_Rechenzentrum,… ... P.L. -- tel: +1 604 670 0140 Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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Re (2): EE, CE, CS buildings on the ETH campus.
by peter＠easthope.ca 24 May '21

24 May '21

From: Till Oliver Knoll <till.oliver.knoll(a)gmail.com> Date: Sat, 22 May 2021 11:07:56 +0200 > So if you ask me: use any nice picture of the ETH Hauptgeb=C3=A4ude (HG)! > No one will recognise the IFW - and again: I am not saying that Professor > N. Wirth and Professor J. Gutknecht were actually already in that > building when starting working on Oberon! I just can't tell. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Oberon#Historical_Perspective Another vantage point might give a better view, including the Rechenzentrum and IFW. The Oberstrass neighbourhood? https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/47.3839/8.5468 That's the best I can do at the present. If someone can improve it, certainly go ahead. Incidentally what is abbreviated by CAB? Thanks to all who have replied, ... P.L. -- tel: +1 604 670 0140 Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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Re (2): EE, CE, CS buildings on the ETH campus.
by peter＠easthope.ca 22 May '21

22 May '21

> So if you ask me: use any nice picture of the ETH Hauptgeb=C3=A4ude (HG)!= > No one will recognise the IFW - and again: I am not saying that Professor > N. Wirth and Professor J. Gutknecht were actually already in that > building when starting working on Oberon! I just can't tell. Thanks Oliver. Generality avoids false information. Will have another look at the wide views available. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ETH_Zurich ... P. -- tel: +1 604 670 0140 Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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EE, CE, CS buildings on the ETH campus.
by peter＠easthope.ca 22 May '21

22 May '21

Oberoners, Dozens of photos are here. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ETH_Zurich I've never visited the campus. Can anyone suggest a photo pertinent to early Oberon development? Is an appropriate EE or CE or CS building prominent in one of the photos? Otherwise this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Zurich#/media/File:Sta_zentrum_hauptgebae… My objective is to include a photo on the title page of the wikibook. Thanks! ... P. L. -- tel: +1 604 670 0140 Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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Michael Franz receives 2020 ACM Chuck Thacker Breakthrough Award
by Andreas Pirklbauer 17 May '21

17 May '21

Hi Chris, > Thank you for the info - that is a great achievement for him. His CV > is also quite impressive :) http://michaelfranz.com/cv.pdf Indeed, in particular the work around just-in-time-compilation e.g. for Mozilla that his team did in the 1990s and which was incorporated into Firefox etc, was excellent. Without that, browsers would not be so fast. From a technical point of view, I learned a lot from him - especially the many (very) clever techniques that he has used in MacOberon (some of which I have later adopted). Very bright fellow. However, from a "tech strategy" point of view, I believe it would have been good to just have gone to Sun Microsystems around 1992/93 - when work on Java was already underway - and propose his slim binary instead of the byte code that was later adopted. But that did not happen. When Sun released Java (with its byte code format) in 1995, I knew it was all over. And the jewel was gone. In all fairness though, one has to add that - unlike today - ETH was more detached from the rest of the world in those days. It went its own way, with a certain level of pride. Today, with modern communication means, it would be different (although I’m not sure Sun would have done anything different). Andreas

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Re: [Oberon] Michael Franz receives 2020 ACM Chuck Thacker Breakthrough Award
by Chris Burrows 16 May '21

16 May '21

> -----Original Message----- > From: Oberon [mailto:oberon-bounces@lists.inf.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of > Andreas Pirklbauer > Sent: Tuesday, 11 May 2021 1:09 AM > To: Oberon List > Subject: [Oberon] Michael Franz receives 2020 ACM Chuck Thacker > Breakthrough Award > > Just FYI: > https://www.acm.org/media-center/2021/april/thacker-award-2020 > > PS: Michael was my assistant in the course Informatik 3/4 given by > Niklaus Wirth in the late 80s. He also showed me many tricks in compiler > design.. > Thank you for the info - that is a great achievement for him. His CV is also quite impressive :) http://michaelfranz.com/cv.pdf The article he wrote "Oberon - the Overlooked Jewel" is a good read. It can be downloaded as a PDF file from several sources. Regards, Chris

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INC(i) vs i := i + 1
by Jeff Maggio 16 May '21

16 May '21

Yeah, for our application I want to write very explicit code that's fairly self-explanatory as part of a tutorial so I chose i := i + 1. Even if they end up using INC(i) down the road, INC(i) isn't necessarily self-explanatory for a novice user without assembly experience *(like me for example)*. It's a small consideration though - I was mostly curious if they are compiled differently best, Jeff > My understanding is that if an experienced Python programmer just wanted to increment an integer variable they wouldn't write i = i + 1, instead they would write: > > i += 1 > > Similarly C++ programmers would write > > i++ > > INC(i) is the best match in Oberon for either of these statements. > > I suspect they would be unhappy if you told them to rewrite this in Python / C++ as > > i = i + 1 > > so they would see this as a disadvantage if they were told that they had to write it this way in Oberon. > > Regards, > Chris Burrows > CFB Softwarehttps://www.astrobe.com > >

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Re (2): Re (n): Streams.
by peter＠easthope.ca 16 May '21

16 May '21

From: eas lab <lab.eas(a)gmail.com> Date: Sun, 16 May 2021 01:32:59 -0400 > <System.Execute ls -ta /mnt/OtherDevice/AnyDir | head -22> There was a similar command in A2. Did you check the current repository? https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Oberon/A2#The_A2_Repository > ... web-based-gmail ... Why not use the mail facilities in A2? https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Oberon/A2#Email Regards, ... P.L. -- tel: +1 604 670 0140 Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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