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From: windley@iris.ucdavis.edu (Phil Windley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2
Subject: Re: Wirth's paper "From Modula to Oberon"
Message-ID: <1992@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 23 May 88 06:25:45 GMT
References: <5260@ico.ISC.COM> <7195@swan.ulowell.edu>
Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu
Reply-To: windley@iris.UUCP (Phil Windley)
Organization: U.C. Davis - College of Engineering
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From article <5260@ico.ISC.COM>, by rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn):
> John Nagle:
>>       In each of Wirth's languages there is some tragic flaw, something
>> that drives users straight up the walls.  What will it be in Oberon?
 
> The lack of a counted loop ("for" statement) gets my nomination for tragic
> flaw.

Until Oberon, I was convinced that modern languages were moving in the
OPPOSITE direction.  For loops are a limited form of generator ala ICON and
of course, with a closure you can do some very interesting things with
generators.  If Wirth is going to say generators are a bankrupt construct
that he is going to have to do more than include one cryptic sentence in a
language description to convince me.


Phil Windley                          |  windley@iris.ucdavis.edu
Robotics Research Lab                 |  ucbvax!ucdavis!iris!windley
University of California, Davis       |