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Links for January 3, 2017

IEEE Computer (PDF): In a February 1995 article, “A Plea for Lean Software”, Niklaus Wirth (inventor of Pascal and Modula-2) laments the size growth in software applications, and calls out time pressure and lack of good design as possible reasons for this growth. In the second half of the article, he discusses his own solution for this problem (Project Oberon) which comprises an operating system, a compiler and a computer. To me, this was a good approach to take from an academic standpoint, but I do not think this had any effect on the mainstream practice of software development (similar in nature to Donald Knuth’s concept of literate programming). A second version of Oberon was released in 2013 (see link below).

Project Oberon – Website linking to Oberon book PDFs and other artifacts

Niklaus Wirth – Home page

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