Modula-3??

[John Eikenberry [MSAI]]

Hello all,

Reading the thread on the idea of a Java version of Swarm,
I thought of another possibility.  There is another possible language
which could be used to solve the multiple-version-dependent-pieces 
problem of the Swarm distribution. That being Modula-3 (M3).

Now, for starters, I am not really very familiar with M3. I have
only read about it, though I am planning on learning it when
I have the time.  That said, from what I have read, it sounds
very well suited for Swarm.  Here's a little info gleened from
an article on it (published in the linux journal by Geoff Wyant).

M3 is a programming system from DEC's Systems Research Center. 
It is a modular, object-oriented language with such features as :
exception handling, run-time typing, multithreading, garbage
collection, a debugger, a distributed object-oriented scripting 
language, a graphical user interface builder, generics, plus some other
things.

Geoff describes it as a more powerful "NeXTStep-like" environment.

It's language definition is 50 pages, and supposedly very well written.

Speed wise, another article described its speed as being equal to,
or faster than, "turbo-pascal". <shrug>

There is a bunch of information regarding it at:
http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/modula-3/html/home.html

I discovered this language when I was looking up information on Obliq
(the scripting language that comes with M3).  Obliq is discussed in a book
I am reading in terms of its potential for writing network based software 
agents.

As I said, I have no direct expereience with this language. And am
not sure if I would be for a change (I am just getting the hang of
Objective-C).  I just thought I'd throw this out to the collective.

Oh, I forgot to mention, M3 is free and available for nearly every 
type of UNIX, plus  Windows95, WindowsNT and OS/2.

Thanks,

John Eikenberry

<address@hidden>
<http://www.ai.uga.edu/students/jae>