Wikipedia page needs improvement

[Rugxulo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2

Some weird changes have been made here, and I just discovered it, so I
haven't been properly able to reflect and fix it myself. Just a heads
up in case someone else disagrees like I do. In particular, not only
has the section on discontinued compilers been removed (which I
thought was useful), but they added these weasel words:

"Modula-2 was never used nearly as widely as similar languages such as
Pascal and C, and as of 2011 is at best a niche language, if not
obsolete. While the "popularity" of programming languages is difficult
to measure in a meaningful way, the Transparent Language Popularity
Index[4] showed Modula-2 in 82nd place in February 2011, rated at
0.05% (compared to leader C at around 15%, Pascal at 1.3%)."

Even if I agreed that Modula-2 isn't the most popular thing in the
world anymore, it would still be a far cry from saying it's
"obsolete", esp. compared to wonderfully "new" tech such as C. ;-))

[aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

Post by Rugxulo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2
Some weird changes have been made here, and I just discovered it, so I
haven't been properly able to reflect and fix it myself. Just a heads
up in case someone else disagrees like I do. In particular, not only
has the section on discontinued compilers been removed (which I
"Modula-2 was never used nearly as widely as similar languages such as
Pascal and C, and as of 2011 is at best a niche language, if not
obsolete. While the "popularity" of programming languages is difficult
to measure in a meaningful way, the Transparent Language Popularity
Index[4] showed Modula-2 in 82nd place in February 2011, rated at
0.05% (compared to leader C at around 15%, Pascal at 1.3%)."
Even if I agreed that Modula-2 isn't the most popular thing in the
world anymore, it would still be a far cry from saying it's
"obsolete", esp. compared to wonderfully "new" tech such as C. ;-))

just select 'history' in the top right corner and find out that polo98
(polonium was discovered in '98 of the 19th century) caused it all. So
I guess we have a polish (w)hacker telling us we're dinosaurs,
awaiting the meteor, while singing merrily about our beloved ideal
language. In my case that may be close to the truth... :0)

We can simply undo all changes in the history section. I leave that to
some one with more brains than me, the modulasaurus.

[Ólafur Gunnlaugsson]

Post by aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Post by Rugxulo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2
Some weird changes have been made here, and I just discovered it, so I
haven't been properly able to reflect and fix it myself. Just a heads
up in case someone else disagrees like I do. In particular, not only
has the section on discontinued compilers been removed (which I
"Modula-2 was never used nearly as widely as similar languages such as
Pascal and C, and as of 2011 is at best a niche language, if not
obsolete. While the "popularity" of programming languages is difficult
to measure in a meaningful way, the Transparent Language Popularity
Index[4] showed Modula-2 in 82nd place in February 2011, rated at
0.05% (compared to leader C at around 15%, Pascal at 1.3%)."
Even if I agreed that Modula-2 isn't the most popular thing in the
world anymore, it would still be a far cry from saying it's
"obsolete", esp. compared to wonderfully "new" tech such as C.  ;-))

just select 'history' in the top right corner and find out that polo98
(polonium was discovered in '98 of the 19th century) caused it all. So
I guess we have a polish (w)hacker telling us we're dinosaurs,
awaiting the meteor, while singing merrily about our beloved ideal
language. In my case that may be close to the truth... :0)
We can simply undo all changes in the history section. I leave that to
some one with more brains than me, the modulasaurus.

This is a part of a general trend for Wirth family languages, the
Zonnon page was removed from wikipedia recently as being not
noticeable, if it had been a dead project I sort of could have
understood but it actually is a currently maintained .NET compiler,
one of the problems people found was that most papers on the language
were not in English ....... urm ...

On the oberon forums there are of then questions like "obviously the
OS and compiler are not written in Oberon, is it written in C or C+
+?", it is almost as if there is C, Python, Pearl, PHP, Ruby, Java and
Javascript and anything else is some sort of technical deviancy and/or
kiddie scripting, I recently visited an acquaintance that was working
on a natural language parser in C, SQL and PHP and was having a hard
time getting things to work, that parser screamed at me "Prolog" but
when I suggested it the answer I got was that they would never get
funding if they used non-standard languages but more importantly that
"Prolog was not a real programming language, but an educational one
like BASIC and Pascal", sigh.

Because of the obvious influence the Oberon system had on the creator
of C# I sort of imagined that people would show more interest in the
Wirth family but alas ....

[aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

And it's all perfectly logical:

C was designed by a genius
C was meant to be used by other geniusses

So, if you use C, you MUST BE a genius as well! It's as simple as
that.

And if you are a genius by simply coding in C, what do you think you
will be when you code in the superlative of C : C++, you must be no
less than an ueber genius!

It's a pity that things go like this, but I don't really care. As long
as we are here, among each other, with our small debates, cherishing
what professor Wirth has made, who cares if the world is sinking away
in a tarpit of spaghetti code?

Isn't it time we start our own wiki in private webspace, so that we
are freed from the terror of the ueber geniuses? Put some more energy
in the webrings, perhaps?

[Marco van de Voort]

Post by Ólafur Gunnlaugsson
+?", it is almost as if there is C, Python, Pearl, PHP, Ruby, Java and
"Prolog was not a real programming language, but an educational one
like BASIC and Pascal", sigh.

I've a standard comeback to that one :-)

Ask them what the 2nd most sold IDE is. Then say it is Delphi (after VS)

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

Post by Marco van de Voort

Post by Ólafur Gunnlaugsson
"Prolog was not a real programming language, but an educational one
like BASIC and Pascal", sigh.

I've a standard comeback to that one :-)
Ask them what the 2nd most sold IDE is.  Then say it is Delphi (after VS)

I don't think Delphi should be separate from Pascal. And honestly,
BASIC could mean any number of dialects, so that's not fair either. So
the language index is not consistent.

To make matters worse, the Wikipedia article should've probably used
"general-purpose and compiled", where Modula-2 takes #31. However, I
disagree that any of those are popular outside C-based languages,
which is the prevailing trend (sadly).

[Marco van de Voort]

Post by Rugxulo

Post by Marco van de Voort

Post by Ólafur Gunnlaugsson
"Prolog was not a real programming language, but an educational one
like BASIC and Pascal", sigh.

I've a standard comeback to that one :-)
Ask them what the 2nd most sold IDE is. ?Then say it is Delphi (after VS)

I don't think Delphi should be separate from Pascal.

It depends who you ask. But fact is that the Delphi/Object Pascal dialect is
much, much larger than the original Pascal including the already larger
TP variants.

If that is virtue or not, that can be debated (and that outcome is pretty
predictable in this group, so don't bother).

The point is more that how far apart can dialects be before they are
separate languages? In Object Pascal's case, the TP dialects, and 95% of
standard pascal are a subset, but in BASIC that question is even more
problematic.

The fact that this problem doesn't only concern computer
languages says enough.

Post by Rugxulo
And honestly, BASIC could mean any number of dialects, so that's not fair
either. So the language index is not consistent.

VB6, VB.NET, the rest is too fragmented and pretty much noise. VB6 is dying
(but like QB and TP that will take 20 years), and VB.NET is tied to .NET and
its emulators, and C#'s poor cousin.

FreeBasic seems to be gyrating towards C with some Basic keywords here and
there. Two more years and they can better rename it to FreeC.

I always console myself with the fact that Basic seems to have been hit by
fragmentation even more than Pascal.

Post by Rugxulo
To make matters worse, the Wikipedia article should've probably used
"general-purpose and compiled", where Modula-2 takes #31. However, I
disagree that any of those are popular outside C-based languages,
which is the prevailing trend (sadly).

I think the webbased algorithms are fundamentally flawed. Specially for the
webbased scripting languages, all topics that are mostly about customizing
some CMS or forum are indexed, and the links count as much as sb having a
professional 500k lines Delphi or C++ app in production.

I think the already mentioned approach, reverting on the grounds of not
being encyclopedic

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

Post by Marco van de Voort

Post by Rugxulo
To make matters worse, the Wikipedia article should've probably used
"general-purpose and compiled", where Modula-2 takes #31. However, I
disagree that any of those are popular outside C-based languages,
which is the prevailing trend (sadly).

I think the already mentioned approach, reverting on the grounds of not
being encyclopedic

Well, I could maybe force myself to let somebody say, "It's old and
not as popular anymore", that's fine. I just think saying, "Obsolete!
0.05% popularity, lusers!" is a bit much (very unfair). I mean, first
of all, who cares? Second, (in "general-purpose and compiled") outside
of the top five (C, Java, Basic [sic], C++, C#), we're talking 3% or
lower each, which is minuscule. So it's pretty much saying that no
languages are popular. 23% for #1 isn't very convincing at all
anyways. If you get 23/100 on a test in school, you fail. So C, their
#1, is clearly obsolete! Time to vandali^H^H^H^H^H revise their
Wikipedia page! ;-)

Statistics can be useful and interesting sometimes, but don't forget
that 90% are made up! :-))

[Christoph Schlegel]

Post by aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Post by Rugxulo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2
Some weird changes have been made here, and I just discovered it, so I
haven't been properly able to reflect and fix it myself. Just a heads
up in case someone else disagrees like I do. In particular, not only
has the section on discontinued compilers been removed (which I
"Modula-2 was never used nearly as widely as similar languages such as
Pascal and C, and as of 2011 is at best a niche language, if not
obsolete. While the "popularity" of programming languages is difficult
to measure in a meaningful way, the Transparent Language Popularity
Index[4] showed Modula-2 in 82nd place in February 2011, rated at
0.05% (compared to leader C at around 15%, Pascal at 1.3%)."
Even if I agreed that Modula-2 isn't the most popular thing in the
world anymore, it would still be a far cry from saying it's
"obsolete", esp. compared to wonderfully "new" tech such as C. ;-))

just select 'history' in the top right corner and find out that polo98
(polonium was discovered in '98 of the 19th century) caused it all. So
I guess we have a polish (w)hacker telling us we're dinosaurs,
awaiting the meteor, while singing merrily about our beloved ideal
language. In my case that may be close to the truth... :0)
We can simply undo all changes in the history section. I leave that to
some one with more brains than me, the modulasaurus.

1. The opinion expressed by the author is personal.

2. But underlined by "The Transparent Language Popularity Index" (the
footnote doesn't work). This is not a scientific study
(http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/). The numbers are the result of
scripts doing web-queries.

3. So, according to the rules of Wikipedia I guess the change has to be
undone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simplified_ruleset#Writing_high-quality_articles

4. The question where a language is used has got nothing to do with
"Derivatives". Maybe a relevance-section would be the playground for
language-warriors. Which should not be part of an encyclopedia. If
Modula-2 needs more than itself to be protected from being deleted:

5. I guess some hints about the present and recent use of Modula-2 would
be nice. Like:
http://www.excelsior-usa.com/pr20040923.html

6. But. Every programming language which is used should not be qualified
as a past/dead language. How about "Modula-2 is not one of the major
languages to be selected for software projects these days."

Thoughts?

C.

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Post by Christoph Schlegel
6. But. Every programming language which is used should not be
qualified as a past/dead language. How about "Modula-2 is not one of
the major languages to be selected for software projects these days."

"Modula-2 is not one of the major languages being selected for software
projects these days."

But of course, it ought to be selected more...

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

Post by Pascal J. Bourguignon
"Modula-2 is not one of the major languages being selected for software
projects these days."
But of course, it ought to be selected more...

Anybody here *successfully* rebuilt GM2? Not me, I tried and failed
several times. :-(

[Christoph Schlegel]

Post by Rugxulo
Hi,

Post by Pascal J. Bourguignon
"Modula-2 is not one of the major languages being selected for software
projects these days."
But of course, it ought to be selected more...

Anybody here *successfully* rebuilt GM2? Not me, I tried and failed
several times. :-(

Yes. While it builds without problems on Debian (stable and testing) for
a long time now I also built it under Windows Vista (Cygwin) now.

If you are using Linux, there are binary packages available for Debian.
These can be converted for other package management systems.

Did you report your problems / ask for support in the gm2 mailing list?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

Post by Christoph Schlegel

Post by Rugxulo

Post by Pascal J. Bourguignon
"Modula-2 is not one of the major languages being selected for software
projects these days."
But of course, it ought to be selected more...

Anybody here *successfully* rebuilt GM2? Not me, I tried and failed
several times.  :-(

Yes. While it builds without problems on Debian (stable and testing) for
a long time now I also built it under Windows Vista (Cygwin) now.

Somebody should host a recent copy somewhere. I've seen an old 2008
Cygwin build online, but for obvious reasons I'd prefer a newer
version. :-)

Post by Christoph Schlegel
If you are using Linux, there are binary packages available for Debian.
These can be converted for other package management systems.
Did you report your problems / ask for support in the gm2 mailing list?

Gaius doesn't have access to Cygwin or Windows, last I heard. He's
probably too busy anyways.

Anyways, maybe I'll try again, but I guess you know that GCC is a pain
to rebuild.

[Christoph Schlegel]

Post by Rugxulo
Hi,

Post by Christoph Schlegel

Post by Rugxulo

Post by Pascal J. Bourguignon
"Modula-2 is not one of the major languages being selected for software
projects these days."
But of course, it ought to be selected more...

Anybody here *successfully* rebuilt GM2? Not me, I tried and failed
several times. :-(

Yes. While it builds without problems on Debian (stable and testing) for
a long time now I also built it under Windows Vista (Cygwin) now.

Somebody should host a recent copy somewhere. I've seen an old 2008
Cygwin build online, but for obvious reasons I'd prefer a newer
version. :-)

Well, my latest binary build is online:

http://freepages.modula2.org/downloads/gm2.zip

I announced it here:

http://freepages.modula2.org/

As you can see this is a simple zip-archive, not a package available
from the Cygwin installer. GM2 lives in /cygwin/gm2 on my box which is
not the right place I think - but I do not care as long as everything works.

Post by Rugxulo

Post by Christoph Schlegel
If you are using Linux, there are binary packages available for Debian.
These can be converted for other package management systems.
Did you report your problems / ask for support in the gm2 mailing list?

Gaius doesn't have access to Cygwin or Windows, last I heard. He's
probably too busy anyways.
Anyways, maybe I'll try again, but I guess you know that GCC is a pain
to rebuild.

Well, I don't think it is a pain - but it's a big tree of sources which
take ages to build on my dated hardware. You can find some information
about building GM2 in the Cygwin environment here:

Only one little trick is necessary to make the compiler build. And I
guess this error will be gone as soon as GM2 will be in the tree of a
newer release of gcc (the libiberty/strsignal-problem was solved some
time ago, after its appearence in 2008).

By the way, I asked in the Cygwin mailing list, why there is an empty
directory for gcc-gm2 in their package-directory, but I got no answer.
Someone must have at least thought of GM2 there...

Regards

Christoph

[Manuel Collado]

Post by Christoph Schlegel

Post by Rugxulo
Hi,

Post by Christoph Schlegel
...

Post by Rugxulo
Anybody here *successfully* rebuilt GM2? Not me, I tried and failed
several times. :-(

Yes. While it builds without problems on Debian (stable and testing) for
a long time now I also built it under Windows Vista (Cygwin) now.

Somebody should host a recent copy somewhere. I've seen an old 2008
Cygwin build online, but for obvious reasons I'd prefer a newer
version. :-)

http://freepages.modula2.org/downloads/gm2.zip
http://freepages.modula2.org/
As you can see this is a simple zip-archive, not a package available
from the Cygwin installer. GM2 lives in /cygwin/gm2 on my box which is
not the right place I think - but I do not care as long as everything works.

Which version of Cygwin (and required packages) have you used? When I
attempt to run your gm2 binaries I get an error message about entry
point _feinitialise not available in cygwin1.dll. My platform is
WindowsXP, if that matters.

Anyway, thanks for making it available.

[Christoph Schlegel]

Post by Manuel Collado

Post by Christoph Schlegel

Post by Rugxulo
Hi,

Post by Christoph Schlegel
...

Post by Rugxulo
Anybody here *successfully* rebuilt GM2? Not me, I tried and failed
several times. :-(

Yes. While it builds without problems on Debian (stable and testing) for
a long time now I also built it under Windows Vista (Cygwin) now.

Somebody should host a recent copy somewhere. I've seen an old 2008
Cygwin build online, but for obvious reasons I'd prefer a newer
version. :-)

http://freepages.modula2.org/downloads/gm2.zip
http://freepages.modula2.org/
As you can see this is a simple zip-archive, not a package available
from the Cygwin installer. GM2 lives in /cygwin/gm2 on my box which is
not the right place I think - but I do not care as long as everything works.

Which version of Cygwin (and required packages) have you used? When I
attempt to run your gm2 binaries I get an error message about entry
point _feinitialise not available in cygwin1.dll. My platform is
WindowsXP, if that matters.
Anyway, thanks for making it available.

Cygwin 1.7.8 - setup.exe 2.738. The latest version I was able to get two
weeks ago.

I guess you found this:
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2004-04/msg00192.html

I remember difficulties with updates when old cygwin1.dlls are around.

My platform is Vista, maybe that's a difference? To be honest, I have no
idea how to help you with this...

Maybe you'd like to read these messages

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gm2/2011-03/msg00029.html

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gm2/2011-03/msg00031.html

to build the compiler for your system -

C.

[Manuel Collado]

Post by Christoph Schlegel

Post by Manuel Collado

Post by Christoph Schlegel
...
http://freepages.modula2.org/downloads/gm2.zip
http://freepages.modula2.org/
As you can see this is a simple zip-archive, not a package available
from the Cygwin installer. GM2 lives in /cygwin/gm2 on my box which is
not the right place I think - but I do not care as long as everything works.

Which version of Cygwin (and required packages) have you used? When I
attempt to run your gm2 binaries I get an error message about entry
point _feinitialise not available in cygwin1.dll. My platform is
WindowsXP, if that matters.
Anyway, thanks for making it available.

Cygwin 1.7.8 - setup.exe 2.738. The latest version I was able to get two
weeks ago.
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2004-04/msg00192.html
I remember difficulties with updates when old cygwin1.dlls are around.

No. It is definitely a problem with the cygwin version. After updating
my cygwin 1.7.7-1 install to the current 1.7.8 version the problem
disappears.

And, as you pointed out, the dowloaded gm2 binaries must be placed in
.../cygwin/gm2 to work. If they are put elsewhere I get a message

"failed to find definition module SYSTEM.def"

when trying to compile.

Well, it seems I have now a working gm2 on cygwin!

Thanks a lot.

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

Post by Manuel Collado
Well, it seems I have now a working gm2 on cygwin!

Ditto, seems to work for me too, though I had to install BinUtils and
GCC first. Though I think you forgot to strip debug info, heh. 50 MB
isn't that huge a download these days, but it's still big enough
(lucky I have fast internet).

BTW, since Gaius uses Linux (Debian?) and not Windows, I did a quick
search and found this, maybe it'll help him (or somebody else) make
prebuilt binaries in the future:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/fedora-cygwin/

[Nemo]

Post by Rugxulo
Anybody here *successfully* rebuilt GM2? Not me, I tried and failed
several times. :-(

This is off-topic but yes, I have successfully rebuilt gm2 on
Solaris/sparc numerous times.

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

Post by Nemo

Post by Rugxulo
Anybody here *successfully* rebuilt GM2? Not me, I tried and failed
several times.  :-(

This is off-topic but yes, I have successfully rebuilt gm2 on
Solaris/sparc numerous times.

For the record, I wasn't trying to be off-topic. But since we were
saying Modula-2 should be selected more for software projects these
days, I couldn't help but think, "If only GM2 was more readily
available". But my experience did indeed show that rebuilding wasn't
trivial. And prebuilt binaries are currently lacking, from what I can
tell.

BTW, is there anywhere you can upload your build? I don't use Solaris,
but I'm sure somebody would find it useful. Sun Freeware, perhaps?