Comment by nickpsecurity

The work started when Wirth saw the same Xerox setup that Apple did. Wirth couldn't buy one so he just built his own lol. The first system Wirth and Jurg Gutknecht designed was Lilith [1]. They improved Pascal to make modular software in the form of Modula-2. They made a P-code-like assembler language called M-code to make compilation easier and raise assembler abstraction slightly. They then wrote most of the system in Modula-2. They had in about 2 years a computer, OS, compiler, and some apps. ETH used these day-to-day and they later morphed into Oberon system.

The brilliance of Wirth was keeping things simple. I think he overdid it but it served him well in many ways. He also kept things consistent where possible. Just having a simple language, compiler, libraries, and consistent + simple bytecode target would be better than what I've dealt with coding. Each iteration, he tries to improve the language and platform with lessons he learned from the first. He also ensures the lowest common denominator is easy to port, compile efficiently, and produce efficient code for.

A lot of inspiration. He's recently put Oberon on a custom, simple processor running on an FPGA. The latest incarnation of the system is A2 Bluebottle [2] with downloads here [3].

[1] http://www.cfbsoftware.com/modula2/Lilith.pdf

[2] http://www.sage.com.ua/en.shtml?e1l0

[3] http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/downloads/index