Comment by Keyframe

Oberon. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Once upon a time there was a great crossroad in the early 90's (when I was a kid and learning programming - keep in mind that perspective).

BASIC was on its way out - we all knew it to some extent due to home computers renaissance, but it was evident it didn't have any staying power. So there were all these wonderful machines with different architectures, OS' and programming languages out there, with no clear winner (it depended on what you wanted to do). So, basically there were two camps in the end, regarding programming languages. Pascal and C. Pascal had that notion that it was, too, on its way out, but was really useful and Oberon was around the corner so it was worth the wait to stick with it. On the other hand C++ was entering the arena full force, because machines were getting faster (it had a stigma of being slow). I went with C, because I was getting into SGI/IRIX and CG (and later on abandoned programming as a full time choice), and some of my friends went with Pascal. Oberon was floating in the air for some years, but nothing happened. This was always a mystery to me. Eventually, Pascal guys moved to Delphi and my circle of C guys either stayed with C (like I did) or bought OO Kool-Aid and went with C++ (of which some later on went to Java). Pascal (later on Delphi) guys developed sort of a cult. It never was clear what happened to Oberon, and (to me) to this day it's a mystery. Funny enough, I can now retrospectively see that programming languages we chose (and stuck with) was heavily influenced by machines/OS' we used. Pascal guys were mostly PC or Atari guys, and C were mostly those with access to *NIX and Amigas.