I think this just a standard Raspberry Pi Linux distro with an emulator for "Project Oberon 2013" preloaded.
Oberon has a tortured version history, so it takes a bit to explain what "Project Oberon 2013" is, but it's basically representative of Oberon in a very early stage of development.
This version was originally described by Wirth in his 1992 book "Project Oberon: The Design of an Operating System, a Compiler and a Computer". After his retirement he prepared a new edition, which came to be known as "Project Oberon 2013". For this edition he switched out the "computer" part -- the original used the now extremely obscure NS32000 CPU, the new edition used a custom RISC architecture implemented on an FPGA. But otherwise than this "implementation detail", the system was unchanged.
(And of course, given the FPGA source code, it's easy to build an emulator.)
But if you try this and it feels primitive -- it is. Later versions of Oberon got much fancier.
skoodge · 4h ago
Are there any "guided" walkthroughs for someone who has never used Oberon (or any of its later versions like Bluebottle or A2) that demonstrate its most unique UI/UX aspects? Something along the lines of Russ Cox' Tour of the Acme Editor[0] but for Oberon?
Oberon seems fascinating and I would like to eventually play around with it in an emulator, but any resources that show how it's being used (as opposed to a description of its design like in Wirth's book for example) would be appreciated.
Author of oberonc here, thanks for trying it out :)
wirrbel · 2h ago
Really cool to see Oberon / Modula retro-tech stuff on the front page.
Whats somewhat interesting is how structurally similar Oberon is to Go. One could say Go is Oberon dragged halfway towards C/Unix conventions (curly braces) with Go channels slapped on.
So either way, if there was inspiration for Go form Oberon or if there was not [a case of convergent evolution I guess in that case], it shows the strength of Wirth's thought.
timbit42 · 2h ago
I would say Go is C dragged halfway towards Oberon. It's essentially the core group that created and used C admitting Wirth's work was better.
pjmlp · 53m ago
They were already inspired by it for how ACME works, and one of the creators, is a former ETHZ student, with a PhD in Oberon research.
Rochus · 1h ago
> how structurally similar Oberon is to Go
There are minor similarities, mostly the fact that it is garbage collected, and also the receiver syntax Go inherited from Oberon-2 (i.e. proposed by Mössenböck, not by Wirth). Go has a completely different focus and is essentially a further development of Newsqueak, which was mostly influenced by Pascal and C.
The linked pdfs on that page are wonderful. I reread Wirth's Plea for Lean Software and it still holds up remarkably well. It reminded me of Alan Kay's VPRI and the STEPS Toward the Reinvention of Programming which unfortunately ended in 2012. Oberon also doesn't seem to be actively developed anymore as far as I can tell. Are there any similar projects that are still being actively worked on?
Rochus · 1h ago
> Oberon also doesn't seem to be actively developed anymore as far as I can tell
was there ever a post mortem on STEPS? I'd like to know what happened as the demoes and ideas they had looked awesome.
drob518 · 3h ago
The paper archive is still up. There were various interim reports generated for STEPS. I assume there was a final report as well, but I don’t remember reading it, myself. Vpri.org still works.
Oberon has a tortured version history, so it takes a bit to explain what "Project Oberon 2013" is, but it's basically representative of Oberon in a very early stage of development.
This version was originally described by Wirth in his 1992 book "Project Oberon: The Design of an Operating System, a Compiler and a Computer". After his retirement he prepared a new edition, which came to be known as "Project Oberon 2013". For this edition he switched out the "computer" part -- the original used the now extremely obscure NS32000 CPU, the new edition used a custom RISC architecture implemented on an FPGA. But otherwise than this "implementation detail", the system was unchanged.
(And of course, given the FPGA source code, it's easy to build an emulator.)
But if you try this and it feels primitive -- it is. Later versions of Oberon got much fancier.
Oberon seems fascinating and I would like to eventually play around with it in an emulator, but any resources that show how it's being used (as opposed to a description of its design like in Wirth's book for example) would be appreciated.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M
1. https://github.com/lboasso/oberonc
Whats somewhat interesting is how structurally similar Oberon is to Go. One could say Go is Oberon dragged halfway towards C/Unix conventions (curly braces) with Go channels slapped on.
Rob Pike was aware of Wirth's work, as his ACME editor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor) ) took inspiration from it.
So either way, if there was inspiration for Go form Oberon or if there was not [a case of convergent evolution I guess in that case], it shows the strength of Wirth's thought.
There are minor similarities, mostly the fact that it is garbage collected, and also the receiver syntax Go inherited from Oberon-2 (i.e. proposed by Mössenböck, not by Wirth). Go has a completely different focus and is essentially a further development of Newsqueak, which was mostly influenced by Pascal and C.
See https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon, and derived languages such as https://github.com/rochus-keller/Luon or https://github.com/rochus-keller/Micron, which inherit the "spirit of Oberon", but specialize for other use-cases than the original.
https://tinlizzie.org/VPRIPapers/tr2012001_steps.pdf
https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos