Xref: utzoo comp.lang.misc:1220 comp.lang.modula2:697
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!uflorida!codas!flnexus!fang!cbseeh
From: cbseeh@fang.ATT.COM (Edmund E Howland)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.modula2
Subject: Re: Re: From Modula to Oberon
Message-ID: <272@fang.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Mar 88 06:43:38 GMT
References: <145@krafla.rhi.hi.is>
Organization: AT&T, Maitland, FL
Lines: 27

> 
> In my opinion Oberon is a significant improvement over
> Pascal, Modula-2 and Ada in one respect:  It has
> automatic garbage collection.  This feature
> is enough to choose Oberon over the other three.
> I would rather have list processing without modules than
> modules with no list processing.  Of course having both
> is best.
> -- 
Huh?
Since when have these three ever had a need for garbage collection?
I am not too familiar with Ada, but garbage collection exists in
languages for whom dynamic binding is a way of life, not an option.

It seems you really are saying that you like languages with imbedded
list processing. Modula-2, Pascal and Ada do not directly support
list contructs in their syntax, but it is of course possible to roll-your-own,
so to speak. Garbage collection is not really the issue. It all boils
down to the right tool for the right job. 

I think it unwise to pick a language over another because of the lack
of some feature, in the latter. I might argue that Ada is a better language
than Modula 2, simply because it has better concurancy primitives. But, if
the application at hand had no use for these features, my argument would be 
invalid. Indeed, Modula 2 would be the better choice since the implementation
would be smaller, resulting in tighter code, and in the long run more 
maintainable.