[Oberon] Standalone BlackBox programs was: GUI programming in Oberon.

[eas lab]

> Reasons Delphi sold well? not sure. Turbo pascal? not sure...

Yes indeed: Human Computer Interface is at the top of the hierarchy of
importance.
The CPU is at the bottom. Insisting on 64-bits is adolescent.

Since a major factor in good HCI is minimizing the amount to be remembered;
[recognising instead of remembering, is much less of a burden]
I was wondering how DOS:TurboPASCAL was so good, without having access
to multiple TextFrames at the same time.

Remembering from the 1980s:
 if your project had 3 or 4 modules,
  you only needed know [probably available from menu]; <show me the
list of modules>;
then you RECOGNISE [no need to remember telephone numbers]
and <point to - give me that one>.

Re. menu-based, there's a spectrum:
 ETHO at the one end is very flexible:
  System.Directory *.Tool -> the specific Tool -> the specific command;
and evolving your own <tool> according to your own requirements, is nice.

At the other end of the spectrum is gmail, with it's absurd dumbed-down
"you eat what we decide to give you, never mind how many fetches [from the
other side of the globe] it requires."

Related: syntax-directed-editors seem a good idea, because the syntax is FIXED.
But the human steps used to navigate to a result via the OS &
programs, depends on
the individuals attributes. Users have different keybrd skills,
memory, screen-size .....

== Chris Glur.