[Oberon] V4 versus S3 survey

[Bob Walkden]

> Some things really cry for a [citation needed]. 

This is an email discussion list, not an academic journal. However, I think there is a paper in The Art of Simplicity (NW's festschrift) which discusses some of the influences on Java, and I believe that the designers of Go and C# have written about it somewhere too. Google is your friend.

>>  while the languages cited may fall some way short of the jewel-like perfection of Oberon, 
> That has LISP-like snobishness to it. I like that but i would also like to understand what justifies the use of such words.

Oberon is stripped down to the bare necessities while retaining complete expressiveness. The other languages have to fit into the commercial world and carry baggage and bling with them. Parnas wrote a paper called Why Software Jewels Are Rare, which discusses Oberon in relation to commercial necessities.