> Oberon is actually unusable by today's standards:

That is obvious.

> But even by yesterday's standards it really was worse than C++ and Ada.

Do you think so? You need to keep in mind the hardware that Wirth did have and 
the goals that he wanted to achieve.

The language was simple, but we all know what the problem with a simple 
language is: People always want new features. I still believe that it was 
better than C++ and that is because C++ has so many features and the compile 
time is abysmal.

About Ada, I don't think that at that time they even did have a working 
compiler for the language, and if they did then it would have cost a fortune.

> That is Oberon the language. Oberon the OS was impressive but there is no 
> reason to believe it would have kept its simplicity if enough users dragged 
> it into the mainstream. I'm also not sure if it wins prizes when compared to 
> a Lisp machine.

But the OS wasn't designed to win prices. Wirth wanted a simple and usable OS 
and with that he achieved AFAIK. You are probably right when we are talking 
about "more, more".

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