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> it can be reasonably inferred that "Oberon System 3" is an operating system

"Oberon is an operating system" was indeed evident, but it's also not particularly illuminating. There are dozens of niche operating systems, why do we care about this one in particular? What does it do that other operating systems don't?



> "Oberon is an operating system" was indeed evident,

No, it is not evident: this is not correct.

Oberon is bare-metal self-hosted programming system. It is both a language and an OS.

> why do we care about this one in particular?

1. It is the final development in the career of Niklaus Wirth, the creator of Pascal. Pascal is the Wirthian language that had considerable commercial success.

(A dialect called the USCD p-System was one of the original 3 OSes that IBM offered for the PC, for instance. Apple created Object Pascal, and implemented parts of the Lisa and original Mac OSes in it. In the early days of DOS, Borland TurboPascal was one of the leading IDEs, and then when 16-bit Windows achieved commercial success, Borland's Delphi led the way as the most sophisticated Windows IDE.)

2. It's the end of his life's work. Wirth did not stop with Pascal.

The next generation was Modula. It was a bit of a flop, but the successor, Modula-2, was a hugely influential language too. Topspeed Modula-2 was at one time the fastest compiler of all kinds for the PC.

Development did not end there.

Others did Modula-3, not Wirth. He moved on to create Oberon.

3. This is the end of the line of the single most widespread and influential family of programming languages outside of the C world.

> What does it do that other operating systems don't?

Wirth was a keen advocate of small size and simplicity.

https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf

Oberon is one of the smallest simplest compiled languages of all time. It is also an OS, and an ID, and a tiled mouse-controlled windowing system. The core is about 4000 lines of code.

4k LOC.

The entire core OS is smaller than the tiniest trivial shell tool on any FOSS Unix.

It is almost unbelievably tiny, it is fast, and it is self-hosting. It can run bare-metal, on multiple platforms, or as a conventional language under another OS. It has its own GUI. It can interop with other languages. You can, and people do, build complete GUI apps in Oberon.

https://blackboxframework.org/

It may be less well-known than its own ancestors but this is an important, significant language, and the final generation of a very important and very much alive dynasty.


Borland Turbo Pascal for CP/M and MS-DOS was developed by Anders Hejlsberg, who went on to develop All The Languages for Microsoft.

Perhaps more surprisingly, Turbo Modula 2 for CP/M (which was certainly surpassed by Topspeed Modula 2) was developed by Martin Odersky, who created Scala.

Throw in Robert Griesemer and his co-creation of Go, and the Wirth family tree is as influential in modern programming as it possibly could be.


> No, it is not evident: this is not correct.

It is evident. It is correct.

You aren't making this any better.


No, it is not correct, and trying to coerce it into the reductive box of an incomplete view does not help.

Comparison: you are angrily maintaining "Orange is a colour! It is right there in the rainbow! Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet! It's a colour! That is the set to which it belongs!"

It is true. But it is incomplete.

It is also a fruit. It belongs equally in "apple, orange, banana, pear, quince."

Also a valid set; no parallel.

It is in other sets too. The set of citrus fruits. "Lemon, orange, lime, pomelo, grapefruit."

Oberon is a programming language.

It is also a set of frameworks. They are integral.

It is also an editor.

It is also a UI design.

It is also an OS.

Any one is true but is incomplete.

There are other views but yours and none is privileged; yours does not invalidate the others, nor they yours. You only see one but your view is too narrow.


I'm not sparring with you. You are wrong.

Oberon is an operating system, and "Oberon is an operating system" is a fair and accurate statement.

I don't expect you to relent on this—I'm too well acquainted. You're still wrong.


It is an OS.

And it is also a programming language, which can run on other OSes as well as on its own native one.

Here's a Windows version:

https://blackboxframework.org/

Here's a Linux version too:

https://blackbox.oberon.org/download

Renamed, but "Component Pascal" is Oberon.

Wirth's Oberon is a compiler, but Oberon can also be compiled with other compilers.

Vishaps interpiles Oberon via C using GCC, Clang etc.

https://vishap.oberon.am/

So does OBNC:

https://miasap.se/obnc/

Astrobe is another alternative compiler:

https://astrobe.com/

OberonC compiles it to the JVM:

https://github.com/lboasso/oberonc

Here is a list of others:

https://oberon07.com/compilers.xhtml

You are keen to rebut me, but you have not refuted me. Provide evidence for your case. Don't tell me I am wrong, because I've had decades of that and I don't care. Show me I am wrong and I will listen.


Premise:

> "Oberon is an operating system"

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762184>

Claim #1:

> this is not correct

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47763595>

Claim #2:

> It is an OS.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47790959>

QED.

* * * *

> You are keen to rebut me

No, I'm really, really not. It would be great if you'd stick to wasting your own time in the future—or, better (esp. if you insist on involving others): only wasting the time of other people like you who would otherwise be doing harm elsewhere.


> "Oberon is an operating system" was indeed evident

> I was about 5 links deep before I figured out what Oberon actually was

You aren't being consistent.




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