{"id":24029,"date":"2022-12-16T16:42:17","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T16:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/16\/gcc-13-to-support-modula-2-the-register\/"},"modified":"2022-12-16T16:42:17","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T16:42:17","slug":"gcc-13-to-support-modula-2-the-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/16\/gcc-13-to-support-modula-2-the-register\/","title":{"rendered":"GCC 13 to support Modula-2 \u2022 The Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Incoming support for Modula-2 in GCC, and a new Gitlab repository for its descendant Oberon, shows that the Wirthian family of programming languages remains livelier than you might think.<\/p>\n

Modula-2<\/a> is what Pascal inventor Niklaus Wirth<\/a> did next. Modula-2 is the direct descendant of Pascal, aimed at more modular (the clue’s right there in the name), and more parallel, programming. Part of the idea was to make it easier to break programs up into discrete chunks, so that they can be compiled, and run, separately.<\/p>\n

In 1976, Wirth spent a sabbatical at Xerox PARC. At that time, this is where the windowing graphical user interface, and the Smalltalk language to program it in, were under active development. Xerox failed to successfully commercialize its work, but it did make a licensing deal with Apple before showing it to some Apple engineers. Apple, of course, very successfully did turn this into shipping products: first the Lisa, and then more lucratively, the Mac.<\/p>\n

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