Oberon in Python, ala Pyrex but instant compile?

[Janto Dreijer]

[It's been 2 days since I posted this reply from google and still
haven't seen it _on_ google, so I'm reposting.]

"Brad Clements" <bkc at Murkworks.com> wrote in message
news:<3cebb0ec_5 at goliath.newsgroups.com>...
> Well, of course Oberon is strict in a draconian way. Isn't that supposed to
> keep you from pointer-munging yourself into a crash?

I've only really had problems with pointer maddness in C. Pointing to
the wrong type of object in memory isn't nearly as big a problem in
other languages. This makes the cure seem worse than the disease. Just
adding a garbage collector to Pascal would have solved most of the
problems I've had (memory leaks).

> I can't help that most of the existing Oberon code was written by students!
> ;-)

Ofcourse there's also the infamous green "programming in oberon -
steps beyond pascal and modula" book written by Wirth himself. One
can't help but point and laugh (if I remember correctly it was written
in 1985).

> Surely it must have some redeeming value, otherwise why is it still around
> teasing the rest of us?

It seems as though oberon tries to "formalize" programming by forcing
it into strict mathematical ideas. I guess that appeals to some
people. Especially to some CS lecturers. Which would explain why I
hear of it only being used in acedemia.

btw our project's specs includes variable declaration and replaced
indentation with "{..}". So in the end it's more of a C interpreter
than python. <sob> I feel so violated.