[Oberon] Re: Oberon Digest, Vol 30, Issue 19

[jan verhoeven]

Op Friday 24 March 2006 12:37 schreef Rory Starkweather:

 > Thank you all. I didn't expect to get such immediate and helpful
 > response.

This is a mailinglist, not a newsgroup. And most of us are dedicated users 
of at least one Wirthian language. Which makes us 'almost family'....

 > my main problem was in figuring out how to do things. 

You should read some books from Wirth, Reiser and Gutknecht. They focus a 
lot on this. A big and complex program usually is a good indication, that 
the progremmer didn't really understand the underlying problem.
Programs should be short and simple. If the algorithm is complex, redo your 
analysis until you understand the problem.

 > There is a lot of documentation about the user interface, but I was 
 > never able to find an explanation of how to create a program in terms 
 > that were meaningful to me. Is that an unusual problem?

You mean, with respect to Oberon? If so, I'm not sure. I did my share of 
assembly language programming. To keep things comprehensible, you had to 
work to very strict rules. When I switched to Modula-2 that was a relief. I 
used the FST Modula-2 compiler (which also works with most flavours of 
Windows) and you can do just about everything with it. It even has a 
built-in assembler which is quite powerful.

More on http://fruttenboel.verhoeven272.nl/modula-2/index.html

For Oberon, I particularly like the book by Wirth and Reiser (Programming 
in Oberon) which is still available (in an english language edition) at 
http://www.mediasell.de If german is not your favorite language, let me 
know and we will work something out.

-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten

Jan Verhoeven
http://fruttenboel.verhoeven272.nl