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From: sludwig@ics.uci.edu (Stefan Ludwig)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2
Subject: Re: Operator Overloading/ size of compilers
Message-ID: <1989Oct2.005126.19561@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Date: 2 Oct 89 00:51:26 GMT
Sender: news@paris.ics.uci.edu (Network News)
Reply-To: Stefan Ludwig 
Organization: University of California, Irvine - Dept of ICS
Lines: 40

Juergen Erhard writes:
>Well, I don't doubt that Prof. Wirth's compilers are *small* and *fast*.
>But Turbo-Pascal isn't that much bigger, and contains a lot more than
>ordinary Modula-2 (or Oberon). Just think of the STRING type in Turbo
>(I sometimes wish I had that in Modula-2)

I have to remind you that only the first versions of Turbo-Pascal were small:
40KB turbo.exe (and there was a good editor in it, too). But the new versions
with that 'UNIT' stuff, are also quite bulky. And the module construct in M2
is far better than that '#include' substitute of Turbo's.
One more thing about smallness: the Oberon operating system (multiple windows,
multi-task (single process, though :-(), with network software, multiple fonts,
garbage collector, and and and) is about 200KB. The whole operating system !!!
I'm always frustrated, when my small test programs on a UNIX machine add up to
200KB ...

>My "Language Of Choice" would be something like a mixture of ADA,
>TopSpeed M2 and C++. Why? Well, ask me. (If I get enough requests, and
>if I care to find out how to post FILES here, I might do it and post
>a file here)

If you'd have a mixture of ADA.... you'd end up with a compiler of ADA-size
and the slowness of those C-compilers on UNIX machines...
Besides, I hope, you just want to take the Class features of C--, not the syn-
tax (just being a pain in your POPO :-).
For ADA-like genericity, C-- classes and M2-Syntax, refer to Eiffel.

>                  Juergen

	Stefan

Stefan H-M Ludwig	"Don't flame my english, it's what
			 they teach us in Swiss schools"

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