Oberon - The Overlooked Jewel

Niklaus Wirth has received much deserved fame for the creation of Pascal, but in many ways, he subsequently became a victim of Pascal's success. In an age of rising specialization, in which most researchers are trying to define themselves as experts in increasingly narrow domains, Wirth stands out as a rare generalist, almost an “Universalgenie” of our discipline. Sadly, the larger computer science community has been unable or unwilling to recognize Wirth's broader horizon as a builder of systems, and throughout his career has pigeonholed him as a “language and compiler guy”. But ever since Pascal, the language aspect has been almost secondary to Wirth's work. Modula(-2) and Oberon both came out of larger system-level design projects that simultaneously also developed workstation computers, modular operating systems, and suites of innovative application programs. Unfortunately, these other important contributions were overshadowed by the programming languages th...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: BIRTHDAY
• Authors: Michael Franz
• Keywords: Applied Computing, BIRTHDAY 2000, Niklaus Wirth, System-level Design, Wirth's Broader Horizon