[Oberon] Oberon v Linux, and DIV and MOD

[Paul Reed]

> From: Frank Copeland <fjc at wossname.apana.org.au>
> Oberon started as an academic research project and after 15 years
> that's pretty much what it still is. Linux started off as a student's
> hobby project and after 10 years it is now a serious competitor to
> every other major OS.
> 
> So who do you think has worked out what NOT to do?
> 
> Frank
I agree with you Frank, that Linux is the more successful,
by yielding to people's desires to "add more features".
There are now no simple versions of Linux.  What Wirth and
Gutknecht showed us with Oberon, is that people who don't want 
the extra features shouldn't have to pay for them.  See (again)
Wirth's "A Plea for Lean Software" (IEEE Computer, Feb 1995).

I feel for the maintainers of Oberon, trying to keep it
simple, but also having to field complaints that it doesn't
have enough features.

As a result of long, bitter experience, I am happy to forgo
features in exchange for reduced complexity, everywhere that
I can.  That said, I wouldn't be able to get many jobs done
without Linux or BSD.

> From: eas-lab at absamail.co.za
> My re-reading the following post emphasised again the need for
> greater formalism:-
> 
> Stefan Salewski wrote:-
> > when rounding Reals to Integers we have at least four ways:
> This seems also to relate to the recent 'DIV query' ?
> I'm guessing (could be very wrong) that the numerical roundings
> are defined by 'the matematical authorities', and n-o's task is to
> implement those higher definitions.
In the case of DIV and MOD, they are often used for
rounding and masking, and that practical use seems to 
take precedence over being faithful to a mathematical
concept.  For example,

  hi := SHORT(long DIV 10000H); lo := SHORT(long MOD 10000H);

should work even when long is negative; also

  INC(size, (-size) MOD 4);

increases size to the next longword boundary.  You see this
sort of thing a lot in Project Oberon.

But as Pieter says, a lot of these things have been discussed
before.

Paul Reed