Project Oberon
by Niklaus Wirth · first published 1992
57% recommend43% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Walks through a complete system built from scratch: RISC CPU on an FPGA, compiler, language, garbage collector, OS, GUI and networking, in about 300 pages. Suits readers wanting a stack small enough for one person.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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I feel like Wirth doesn't get enough credit these days. I have come to really appreciate his writing, especially books like Project Oberon and Compiler Construction. I thought Pascal (and by extension, the Modula languages) was lame when I was younger and full of C-and-Unix machismo, but I came to have a strong appreciation for the design…
on “Celebrating Niklaus Wirth's 80th Birthday” ↗…https://www.infoq.com/presentations/csharp-systems-programmi... There are quite a few OS projects written in system programming languages with GC, all the way back to Mesa/Cedar at Xerox PARC. If you want to have an idea, check the Project Oberon book. http://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/ProjectOberon/index.html This is the 2013 re-edition, it was originally published in 1992.
on “Show HN: A new hobby OS from “scratch” in C#” ↗For those interested, you can find the latest Oberon system by Prof. Wirth here: http://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/ProjectOberon/ You can run Project Oberon with this emulator (pre-built binaries available): https://github.com/pdewacht/oberon-risc-emu
on “Oberon – The Overlooked Jewel [pdf]” ↗…Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach Toby Segaran, Programming Collective Intelligence Toffoli and Margolus, Cellular Automata Machines Niklaus Wirth, Project Oberon: The Design of an Operating System and Compiler Witten, Moffat, & Bell, Managing Gigabytes (mostly from my old list at http://wry.me/~darius/personal/books.html)
on “Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?” ↗…in Pascal/Modula line of languages it is easier to understand than how C and C++ do it. Have a look at "Algorithms and Data Structures. Oberon version", "Object-Oriented Programming in Oberon-2." and "Project Oberon". http://www.inr.ac.ru/~info21/ADen/ http://ssw.jku.at/Research/Books/ http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/ Even if Oberon(-2) isn't your cup of tea, I personally think these concepts…
on “Rust 1.0: Scheduling the trains” ↗…a free-software, it's opensource but not a free-software. And the fact that your operating system is the actual language you're coding with, reminds me of the fantastic project by Niklaus Wirth, The Project Oberon. The project Oberon is a language and operating system you can learn more about it at http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/, http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ and a video by professor…
on “Unikernels: Rise of the Virtual Library Operating System” ↗…https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox If you want to read about a OS written in a fully memory safe language, including the source code, check Niklaus Wirth books: http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/books.html Specially Project Oberon. The 2013 re-edition has an updated hardware design for an FPGA. http://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/ProjectOberon/index.html This is how it used to look like in its latest incarnations as BlueBottle written…
on “Systems Programming in C# by Joe Duffy” ↗Type safety. I advise you to read Project Oberon from Niklaus Wirth, originally published in 1992, revised in 2013 for targeting a FPGA instead of the Ceres workstation that was used at Zurich Institute of Technology (ETHZ) during the 90's. https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/ProjectOberon/index.html…
on “Gopher-OS: A Proof of Concept OS Written in Go” ↗Since Delphi derives from Pascal, it seems appropriate to mention Project Oberon, an awesome OS project that Niklaus Wirth (creator of Pascal) worked on: http://www.projectoberon.com If you want to borrow the book, I have a copy in my office in SoMa (2nd and Bryant).
on “Why I Choose Delphi” ↗The book "Project Oberon: The Design of an Operating System and Compiler" https://www.amazon.com/Project-Oberon-Design-Operating-Compi... contains a detailed explanation of the design for the Oberon compiler and operating system.…
on “Oberon – The Overlooked Jewel [pdf]” ↗The Oberon OS is a unequaled pinnacle of user interface design, IMHO. (In addition to the Oberon language, which is great (in context), and the internal organization of the Project Oberon OS in an education in itself. (Prof Wirth has kindly made the book into PDFs for distribution, available here: http://www.projectoberon.com/ This book is soooo good for computer system design).)
on “Ultibo – Environment for embedded development on Raspberry Pi” ↗Not quite the response you wanted but I just wanted to mention project Oberon (http://www.projectoberon.com) by Niklaus Wirth. In 300 some pages, starting with an FPGA, you implement a CPU, a compiler for said CPU, a language targeting the CPU and an OS which includes a GUI and…
on “Ask HN: How to get started developing with FPGA?” ↗…Afterwards you can follow up with building an workstation OS on a systems programming language with GC, all the way from the boot sector loading code to the graphical UI, by reading and implementing "Project Oberon". The 2013 edition uses an FPGA instead of the original Ceres hardware. A̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶i̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶W̶i̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶r̶e̶t̶i̶r̶e̶,̶ ̶h̶e̶…
on “Build Your Own Text Editor” ↗Check out Project Oberon: https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/ProjectOberon/index.html and "System design from provably correct constructs": https://archive.org/details/systemdesignfrom00mart And "don't let the turkeys get you…
on “I don't want to go to Chel-C” ↗> Can a language that uses GC (presumably, it says no manual memory management) be used to program an OS? Yes, Project Oberon[0] by Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht is written in Oberon-07 which is a very small programming language with a garbage collector. The garbage collector is even written in Oberon-07. [0] http://www.projectoberon.com/
on “The Zimbu programming language” ↗