Oberon - The Overlooked Jewel
Michael M. Franz · 2000
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 they were associated with, and hence never received the recognition they deserved. This article presents selected facets of Project Oberon, the latter of Wirth’s two large system-level design efforts. The leitmotiv of this project was a quote from Einstein, “make it as simple as possible, but not simpler”. And if any further evidence was still needed, Oberon provided the conclusive proof for Wirth’s mastery of The Art of Simplicity.