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From: heiser@ethz.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: modula2 and dbx
Message-ID: <87@bernina.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-May-87 04:18:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: bernina.87
Posted: Thu May 14 04:18:04 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 16-May-87 14:45:49 EDT
References: <312@paisley.ac.uk>
Reply-To: heiser@ethz.UUCP (Gernot Heiser)
Organization: ETH Zuerich, Switzerland
Lines: 29
Xref: utgpu comp.lang.modula2:180 comp.unix.questions:2028

In article <312@paisley.ac.uk> rh@cs.paisley.ac.uk (Robert Hamilton) writes:
>HAving just installed BSD 4.3 I was delighted to see that dbx now has
>support for the DEC Western  REsearch Laboratory modula-2 (mod)
>
>Question is where do I get mod? does it cost? 
>We've been using the Cambridge m2 compiler since 4.1 .
>Anybody had experience of both? how does mod compare?

I had a look at the DEC compiler when we got it and was disgusted. They
shouldn't be allowed to call that Modula-2, it looks more like a dialect of
C. Probably the people who wrote it never programmed any Modula-2.
Examples: by default, the compiler is NOT case-sensitive, "thus, case
variations of reserved words may not be used for identifiers". (This nonsense
can be disabled by a compiler option.)

Much worse: definition modules are not compiled (and there is no compiler
option to fix that). Hence:
   - no timestamping, no consistency checks when modifying definition modules.
     Any real Modula-2 programmer estimates that as one of the most powerful
     language features when developing large systems.
   - identifiers imported in the definition module are not known in the
     implementation module, they must be imported again. This will generate a
     compile-time error in most other Modula-2 systems

It took me very little time to decide that the Cambridge system is excellent
(especially stuff like m2make etc). It took me much less time to decide to
keep off the DEC compiler.

Cheers