[HN Gopher] The School of Wirth
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       The School of Wirth
        
       Author : gjvc
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2021-03-14 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (pascal.hansotten.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (pascal.hansotten.com)
        
       | open-source-ux wrote:
       | One principle that Niklaus Wirth has always espoused and with
       | which I agree: you cannot reduce the complexity of a programming
       | language by expanding the size of the language with greater
       | features. This sounds like a contradiction, but as Wirth says in
       | the preface to his Oberon programming tutorial:
       | 
       |  _" The language Oberon emerged from the urge to reduce the
       | complexity of programming languages, of Modula in particular.
       | This effort resulted in a remarkably concise language. The extent
       | of Oberon, the number of its features and constructs, is smaller
       | even than that of Pascal. Yet it is considerably more powerful."_
       | 
       | The FreePascal of today has grown considerably over time. The
       | same can be said of many popular languages today: PHP, Ruby,
       | Python, C#, Javascript, etc. Some languages start big from the
       | beginning (e.g. Ada).
       | 
       | With large languages there is also the feeling you've only
       | learned a subset of the language, blissfully unaware of many
       | other features the language offers. At least with smaller
       | languages you have a greater chance to master the language whole.
       | 
       | Of course, it doesn't automatically follow that a smaller
       | language will be simpler or easier to grasp. (There is plenty of
       | argument surrounding Go's supposed simplicity.)
        
         | Koshkin wrote:
         | One of the nice things about Oberon-07 is that the compiler
         | I've played with could compile itself and the standard library
         | all in a tiny fraction of a second.
        
       | galaxyLogic wrote:
       | I wonder, why Modula (-II) never overtook Pascal?
        
         | Koshkin wrote:
         | Because Turbo Pascal already had modules.
        
           | JasonFruit wrote:
           | Not just that Turbo Pascal had modules, but that it had
           | enough of the market that it would have been hard for Modula-
           | _x_ to get a foothold, even if Wirth was a salesman, which he
           | was not.
        
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