Status of Oberon readiness for application programming

Question

I am getting interested in the Oberon language and I would like to know: is the language actually used by common programmers or is it still only used by researchers? Is it production-ready? What I have in mind are non-scientific applications requiring GUI support and possibly Internet connectivity (at least client-side POP3 and SMTP functionality). Also, which of the Oberon flavors would you recommend for my needs (Oberon2, Active Oberon, etc)? The simpler, the better, as long as it is well maintained and has some community. If possible, I would like to run my applications in a conventional host environment (Windows or Linux), without the need for a special runtime environment or a special operating system.

Thanks

Answer 1

is the language actually used by common programmers or is it still only used by researchers?

There was/is little use of the original Oberon language outside academia; there was some industrial adaptation of Oberon dialects like e.g. Component Pascal.

Is it production-ready?

Depends on your requirements. Given todays expectations of software developers the (original) language and available toolchains seem very minimalistic.

non-scientific applications requiring GUI support and possibly Internet connectivity ... in a conventional host environment... which of the Oberon flavors would you recommend for my needs?

GUI support and network programming in a conventional host environment is e.g. supported by https://blackboxframework.org as already mentioned, which uses a language related to Oberon.

You could also have a look at https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon which includes a platform independend IDE with semantic navigation and a source-level debugger, plus a platform independent foreign function interface as a language extension which allows you to directly use any C shared library, and thus reuse the plethora of existing proven GUI or network libraries out there without having to program in C. It also offers a modern, lean syntax variant without all the semicolons and capitalized keywords, which should appeal especially to younger developers; but of course also the traditional syntax is supported, even mixed modern/traditional syntax projects.

Answer 2

OBNC is a new compiler for the latest version (2016) of the original Oberon language by Niklaus Wirth. It compiles via C and makes it easy to interface to existing C libraries.

https://miasap.se/obnc/

Answer 3

Given that Oberon [language] was developed as a complete [operating-]system, and that ETH's CS department ran ALL its computers (even the secretary's) on it I should think it is application-ready. This according to the following PDF:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~franz/Site/pubs-pdf/BC03.pdf

Answer 4

BlackBox has some of what you want, runs on flavors of Windows.

There are also some environments that compile to Java bytecode and target the JVM.

Look at POW, and Gardens Point Component Pascal.

I happen to be using some command-line only tools that are Oberon Compilers.

OO2C is an Oberon to C compiler (but the output is not for human consumption).

Ofront is an Oberon to Human-Readable C, but I haven't yet set up a linux box to run it on. (otherwise, it is supposed to run inside of BlackBox on Windows).

There is also Oxford Oberon Compiler by Professor Spivey. A VERY enjoyable Compiler that compiles to a Virtual Machine, but the whole object code is a self-contained application (albeit command -line).

It is a VERY small download, meant for an educational environment, keeps everything CLEAN, and works well for prototyping some of the grunt work or procedures/modules of your code. It also is supposed to allow bitmap drawing in XWindows in Black and White only, probably for drawing graphs, etc, but I have not had an opportunity to use that feature yet.

It has a GUI-based debugger, profiling, and some other interesting tools, and still is very small by comparison to most modern compilers like gcc. It is also totally stand alone.

Works on Mac, Win, Linux, and has source.

By comparison, OO2C took me about a day of futzing and compiling to get it going (but it is working).

I don't have a Windows box right now, so I can't run my copy of BlackBox, but it had a full GUI, and lots of Source code available at the Component Pascal Collection website.

http://www.zinnamturm.eu/index.htm

If you are looking for source code you should also check out that site in hopes you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Really a joy to step into Oberon after having to fight C/C++ all day long to get simple stuff done.