[Oberon] Current Oberon System

[Chris Burrows]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: chris at gcjd.de-web.ws [mailto:chris at gcjd.de-web.ws]
> Sent: Friday, 21 December 2012 4:48 AM
> To: ETH Oberon and related systems
> Subject: Re: [Oberon] Current Oberon System
> 
> Several years ago I evaluated this way and unless things have changed very
> much since then gcc internals are a mess, documentation is soso and gcc is
> a huge and moving target not easy to handle if you have been exposed to
> Wirth style. 

'huge' is an understatement - the gcc stats are truly scary; 

"GCC in Git is currently up to 77,053 files amounting to 7,348,239 lines"

"The activity so far this year saw the addition of 1,123,593 lines of new
code and the removal of 812,895 lines of code."

  http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE1OTg

In stark contrast: 

* The internals of Wirth's ARM Oberon compiler is a work of art and a joy to
work with.

* The documentation is extensive, concise and very readable. His 131-page
Compiler Construction book describes the design of the Oberon compiler in
general: 

  http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf

and his 46-page document describes the ARM code generator in great detail:

 
http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/Articles/Oberon/Oberon.ARM.Compiler.pd
f

* The system is miniscule. Wirth's ARM Oberon source code comprises about
4000 lines of code in six source files.

Regards,
Chris

--
Chris Burrows
Astrobe: Oberon for Cortex-M3 (v4.3 Nov 2012)
http://www.astrobe.com