[Oberon] 30th anniversary of Oberon

Thu Jan 2 15:52:33 CET 2020

When I studied at ETHZ during 82-87 we used Modula-2 on Lilith. Just towards the end of my studies (1987) I witnessed a first Ceres computer using a first draft of the Oberon system.
The dissertations explaining the Ceres HW design are dated 1987.
First ideas of Oberon as successor of Modula-2 started late 1985 and first ETH internal implementations of the Oberon system existed in 1987 as a piece of HW without OS is nice but kind of fruitless.

The two publications „The Oberon programming language“ and „The Oberon system“ officially appeared in 1988.
Some refinements appeared in the following years.

br
Jörg

> Am 01.01.2020 um 19:04 schrieb "rochus.keller at bluewin.ch" <rochus.keller at bluewin.ch>:
> 
> @ Chris Burrows
> 
> Thanks for your response. 
> 
>>> Wait at least a week before drawing that conclusion. Some of us are in different timezones to you.
> 
> Ok, sorry for being impatient. There was so much traffic on this list the last few days so I assumed people are online anyway.
> 
>>> Define 'release'. Do you mean first successful implementation, first publicly available version, something else?
> 
> Usually it's the date of an official publication, such as the 1988 language report which was published in Wiley Software: Practice & Experience. Also an official techical report of a university or similar documents are official publications. I don't think the date when the document was written or an idea was stabilized is the relevant date. 
> 
>>> when the article "From Modula to Oberon" was posted on the bulletin board of the Journal of Pascal, Ada and Modula-2. It was timestamped Tue Feb 23 20:43:46 1988.
> 
> That's the same year as the aforementioned publication. Nevertheless the 25th anniverary was apparently celebrated on 2011 which points to 1986 as the (informal) "date of appearance". It's a bit surprising though why it took another two years to publish the famous "16 pages". It's also interesting that the "1986" date doesn't show up in the 1988 "From Modula to Oberon" publication, but only in the HOPL paper from 2005 (which appeared in History of Programming Languages, Volume III, 2007, ACM ISBN 9781595937667).
> 
> Best
> R.
> 
> 
> _______________________________
> From: Chris Burrows
> Sent on: Thu, 02 Jan 2020 00:25:51 +0100
> To: ETH Oberon and related systems
> Cc: 
> Subject: Re: [Oberon] 30th anniversary of Oberon
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Oberon [mailto:oberon-bounces at lists.inf.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of
>> rochus.keller at bluewin.ch
>> Sent: Thursday, 2 January 2020 8:41 AM
>> To: oberon at lists.inf.ethz.ch
>> Subject: [Oberon] Fwd: 30th anniversary of Oberon
>> 
>> Okay, no one seems to care. 
> 
> Wait at least a week before drawing that conclusion. Some of us are in different timezones to you. Many of us are on holiday. Some only get weekly digests of this mailing list.
> 
>> However, I did a little more research.
>> Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any consensus on the date of
>> Oberon's release. 
> 
> Define 'release'. Do you mean first successful implementation, first publicly available version, something else?
> 
>> The German Wikipedia states 1991, the English
>> Wikipedia 1986, the French and Italian Wikipedia "1986, 1987 et
>> 2007". Wirth on his homepage references two language versions: 1990
>> and the revised 2007. There is apparently a prior language report
>> from 1988: https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380180707. 1986 is only
>> mentioned in the HOPL paper ("the language was fully defined in early
>> 1986"), but the referenced report is the one from 1988. This gives us
>> a whole range of publication years to choose from.
>> 
> 
> The first time I heard of Oberon was when the article "From Modula to Oberon" was posted on the bulletin board of the Journal of Pascal, Ada and Modula-2. It was timestamped Tue Feb 23 20:43:46 1988.
> 
> Regards,
> Chris Burrows
> 
> 
> ----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----
> Von : rochus.keller at bluewin.ch
> Datum : 01/01/2020 - 23:10 (CET)
> An : oberon at lists.inf.ethz.ch
> Betreff : Fwd: 30th anniversary of Oberon
> 
> Okay, no one seems to care. However, I did a little more research. Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any consensus on the date of Oberon's release. The German Wikipedia states 1991, the English Wikipedia 1986, the French and Italian Wikipedia "1986, 1987 et 2007". Wirth on his homepage references two language versions: 1990 and the revised 2007. There is apparently a prior language report from 1988: https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380180707. 1986 is only mentioned in the HOPL paper ("the language was fully defined in early 1986"), but the referenced report is the one from 1988. This gives us a whole range of publication years to choose from.
> 
> It's easier with Algol (and with a couple of other languages I'm aware of). The language is called Algol 60, which is the year it was published. 
> 
> Is there a description somewhere what actually changed between the 1988 and 1990 reports?
> 
> Best
> R.
> 
> ----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----
> Von : rochus.keller at bluewin.ch
> Datum : 01/01/2020 - 14:30 (CET)
> An : oberon at lists.inf.ethz.ch
> Betreff : 30th anniversary of Oberon
> 
> According to https://inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/Oberon/Oberon.Report.pdf Oberon can celebrate its 30th birthday on October 1. of this year.
> 
> Algol 60 has even its 60th anniversary this year, see http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/report/Algol60_report_CACM_1960_June.pdf .
> 
> Is there any celebration of this at ETH Zurich?
> 
> Best
> R.
> 
> 
> --
> Oberon at lists.inf.ethz.ch mailing list for ETH Oberon and related systems
> https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon