[Oberon] Viability of A2 & ARM?

[Douglas G. Danforth]

Bob,
Good comments.

I am currently doing all of my development work in BlackBox/Component Pascal
and making money doing so!

However, this is to only a few small clients who don't care about what 
language
in which their app is written.  They only want the functionality (as a 
.exe or .dll).

My strategy is not to be meek about Wirth's languages but to simply 
state the
facts and why I strongly prefer it (to C++ say).

-Doug Danforth

On 1/26/2012 3:12 PM, Bob Walkden wrote:
>> Ever since I began looking at the Oberon "family" of technologies,
>> I've been wondering the same thing.
>>
> if they don't achieve a critical mass of acceptability very quickly they
> don't stand a chance, whatever their merits and they never reach the tipping
> point. I've worked in commercial software development for>30 years and have
> always liked Wirth languages, but I would never be able to promote one as an
> alternative to the mainstream because we would never be able to hire enough
> people for it to be a long-term proposition. Since no-one hires programmers
> that know the language, people don't want to learn it and a vicious cycle
> establishes itself.
>
> On the other hand, once a language passes a critical point even
> non-programmers have heard of it, whatever its merits or demerits. Just this
> week I've been discussing with some of my users a system that needs to be
> redeveloped. Their senior manager insisted that it be written in C++ (which
> is not a language we use). Of course it's none of his business what we write
> it in, but his request no doubt hides some deeper concern so I asked why
> this was important to him. He said that 'languages' like Excel were
> vulnerable to changes in Microsoft operating systems and only systems that
> were developed from compiled code were not. Hmm.
>
> But it's this sort of naivety that helps to give stuff like C++ traction
> where Oberon has none.
>
> Anyway, if we develop this software it will be in C# which has the advantage
> of at least some of Wirth's good influences.
>
> B
>
>
> --
> Oberon at lists.inf.ethz.ch mailing list for ETH Oberon and related systems
> https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon
>