Modula-2 Language Frontend Patches Ready For Merging Into GCC 13

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Modula-2 Language Frontend Patches Ready For Merging Into GCC 13

In addition to today seeing the GCC Rust front-end being declared ready for merging with its latest patch series sent out today, the Modula-2 front-end sent out its third revision which is also expected to now be merged as another new programming language front-end for GCC 13...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GCC-Modula-2-Ready

[uid313]

Ugh!
Remove it from the tree, delete the code! Let's forget Modula-2 ever existed!

[Mark625]

Ugh!
Remove it from the tree, delete the code! Let's forget Modula-2 ever existed!

Don't be ridiculous. A lot of work has gone into this, and these developers deserve to have their contributions recognized. Adding this front-end to GCC won't impact any other GCC languages, and it may introduce the language to a wider audience.

Modula-2 actually popularized the idea of separate compilation with full type checking and enforcement of data abstraction. The C++ language is only just now getting support for modules, 40 years after Modula-2 pioneered the concept.

I agree that the look of Modula-2 source code can be somewhat jarring compared to the all-lower-case C family languages, and it is not object oriented. Nor does it support templates, and it lacks the memory safety features of Rust. It was designed as a systems-level programming language, more akin to C than C++. In fact the OS and all applications for the Lilith computer were written in Modula-2. So it is a capable language that introduced a lot of important concepts to computer science back in the day. Kind of like Rust is doing today.

Cheers!

[rclark]

Neat! Syntax wise it looks much like Pascal which I really like . See Pascal was the language of choice at college, and Turbo Pascal came out while I was there.... Loved it and all its updates through Delphi. I've never dabbled in Modula-2, but have heard about it in passing now and then over the years. We should get back to the 'basics' (the simple life) so to speak rather than all these complicated ivory tower high level object oriented languages that cause so much headaches (a lot of time) . Ie. Just the standard easy to learn and use languages like C, Pascal, Fortran, Modula-2, even dare I say Cobol maybe?.... Push Rust, C++, Java to the side.... Ha! That said, might have to kick Modula-2's wheels just to see what's there.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

Neat! Syntax wise it looks much like Pascal which I really like . See Pascal was the language of choice at college, and Turbo Pascal came out while I was there.... Loved it and all its updates through Delphi. I've never dabbled in Modula-2, but have heard about it in passing now and then over the years. We should get back to the 'basics' (the simple life) so to speak rather than all these complicated ivory tower high level object oriented languages that cause so much headaches (a lot of time) . Ie. Just the standard easy to learn and use languages like C, Pascal, Fortran, Modula-2, even dare I say Cobol maybe?.... Push Rust, C++, Java to the side.... Ha! That said, might have to kick Modula-2's wheels just to see what's there.

do you even defold bro ?

[Ironmask]

Ugh!
Remove it from the tree, delete the code! Let's forget Modula-2 ever existed!

As long as there's someone to maintain the code then there's no reason to remove it.
Linux is chock full of ridiculous and useless drivers for some old obscure hardware, but someone's still maintaining it, so they earned their right to stay.

[zboszor]

Neat! Syntax wise it looks much like Pascal which I really like . See Pascal was the language of choice at college, and Turbo Pascal came out while I was there.... Loved it and all its updates through Delphi.

You can install fpc which feels pretty much like Turbo Pascal language wise. It's a command line compiler, though, so you need to create your source code in some other way.

[Akiko]

You can install fpc which feels pretty much like Turbo Pascal language wise. It's a command line compiler, though, so you need to create your source code in some other way.

Yeah, but the machine code generated by this compiler is so bad that even a German company put a 15k Euro prize into the public to get it at least on par with the compiler from Delphi/Kylix (fucking Kylix, which is million years old - just to understand how bad it is). Having a Pascal dialect as frontend for GCC really is a huge thing. I am already looking forward to it.

[jacob]

Modula unfortunately came too late. In the mid-80s C was firmly rooted as the ubiquitous system programming language and even though Modula-2 was objectively a better and nicer language, it was not better enough.

[oleid]

It's a command line compiler, though, so you need to create your source code in some other way.

Well, there is Lazarus: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/