[Oberon] RE: Oberon digest, Vol 1 #57 - 10 msgs

[Douglas G. Danforth]

Frank van Riet wrote:
> 
> Hi all
> 
> I', really happy that I sparked some productive discussion which does not
> revolve around
> mice and fonts :) !
> 
> I'm really uncomfortable with trying to hide the size of variables i.e.
> having a single integer
> type. I feel that this actually detracts from the portability of the code.

In the programming language MAINSAIL (Machine Independent SAIL) 
which I used before discovering Oberon all numeric calculations were
"guarenteed" to a given number of bits or a given number of decimal
places.  Porting from machine to machine was trivial.  The accuracy
could only improve above that guarenteed.

(MAINSAIL was also module based (circa 1976).  It even swapped modules
if memory was low, but then thrashing could result).

-Doug