A lot of my earliest programming experiences were with Pascal. Apple Pascal in high school on Apple IIe and II+ machines. Later, Turbo Pascal on my dad's PC. I worked with the developer of IBM's Oberon system for OS/2 something like 20 years ago, and he considered it among his favorite things he'd ever worked on.
Every time I see a Borland style interface or that weird Pascal syntax, I flash back, and remember that feeling of...something like power; the ability to make the computer do anything you wanted, not just what you could already buy/pirate on disk.
That said, there's a reason I didn't keep using Turbo Pascal once I had access to C and Perl on Linux systems. Some things are better than others, and Turbo Pascal and things like Turbo Pascal are nostalgic, but not exactly good. (Then again, I'm working on games for C64, so nostalgia does things to a body.)
My first experience with Pascal was only a few years ago by way of Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it and find it a much more pleasant experience than C. I'm sort of sad I missed the heyday of the Borland tooling because it seems incredibly productive even without nostalgia.
The version which I would really like to see would be a native distribution for the Raspberry Pi of the Oberon Workstation environment --- apparently there is a problem with the drivers which makes porting difficult.
The linked project web site (https://free.oberon.org/en) proudly features a video with a thumbnail showing a rendition of the USSR's parliament, the so called Supreme Soviet, with some screenshots added in.
I think some of the devs are Russian and a quick scan of the video doesn't show anything other than a shared screen for the bulk of the time (using the mouse to grab the time pointer and move it quickly through the length of the presentation).
Sure. But there are also a significant number of people who are nostalgic for it and might be offended by this use for that reason, hence why I asked.
Given the existence of both groups I think just the claim that it’s offensive, without explaining why, is ambiguous and just reacting defensively doesn’t address that.
A lot of my earliest programming experiences were with Pascal. Apple Pascal in high school on Apple IIe and II+ machines. Later, Turbo Pascal on my dad's PC. I worked with the developer of IBM's Oberon system for OS/2 something like 20 years ago, and he considered it among his favorite things he'd ever worked on.
Every time I see a Borland style interface or that weird Pascal syntax, I flash back, and remember that feeling of...something like power; the ability to make the computer do anything you wanted, not just what you could already buy/pirate on disk.
That said, there's a reason I didn't keep using Turbo Pascal once I had access to C and Perl on Linux systems. Some things are better than others, and Turbo Pascal and things like Turbo Pascal are nostalgic, but not exactly good. (Then again, I'm working on games for C64, so nostalgia does things to a body.)
My first experience with Pascal was only a few years ago by way of Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it and find it a much more pleasant experience than C. I'm sort of sad I missed the heyday of the Borland tooling because it seems incredibly productive even without nostalgia.
> Then again, I'm working on games for C64, so nostalgia does things to a body.
You should check out Turbo Rascal (...), but you probably already did.
https://lemonspawn.com/turbo-rascal-syntax-error-expected-bu... (outdated cert)
https://github.com/leuat/TRSE/
I did, but I prefer C. And, I prefer vim to an IDE.
Can't wait to try this on Mac (English manual install intstructions at https://github.com/kekcleader/FreeOberon/commit/489c5a929bf9...). I feel like Oberon is very much worth a look for people interested in small, powerful languages.
The version which I would really like to see would be a native distribution for the Raspberry Pi of the Oberon Workstation environment --- apparently there is a problem with the drivers which makes porting difficult.
The linked project web site (https://free.oberon.org/en) proudly features a video with a thumbnail showing a rendition of the USSR's parliament, the so called Supreme Soviet, with some screenshots added in.
Extremely poor taste.
I suppose it's just imagery from the heyday of Wirth's Oberon, ca 1987.
BTW Oberon was / is not just a language, but a whole very interesting interactive computing environment.
I think some of the devs are Russian and a quick scan of the video doesn't show anything other than a shared screen for the bulk of the time (using the mouse to grab the time pointer and move it quickly through the length of the presentation).
> Extremely poor taste.
How so?
Soviet imagery in countries that have been conquered by or subject to Soviet imperialism is seen extremely poorly. USSR loved its ethnic cleansing and purges, with several declared as genocide. Try, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lentil_(Caucasus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD Soviet imagery has also been widely used by Russian propaganda in its current war against Ukraine, so it’s not only a historical matter.
Sure. But there are also a significant number of people who are nostalgic for it and might be offended by this use for that reason, hence why I asked.
Given the existence of both groups I think just the claim that it’s offensive, without explaining why, is ambiguous and just reacting defensively doesn’t address that.
That's bait. Go find your history school books. Byebye.
How about you just explain what you mean?
You’re the one who made the statement. It’s on you to support it.
GOG's nazi dogwhistle earlier this week was extremely poor taste. This one is just weird
More info please? I have severe doubts that GOG actually had that intent.
This one [0]. Which German QA picked up and said 'no way', and so German customers didn't get the newsletter. But everyone else still did.
[0] https://www.pcgamer.com/games/gog-apologizes-for-emailing-na...
Whataboutism is in poor taste.
"freeoberon-lang.org"