ESP8266 Community Forum

- Fri Jul 03, 2015 1:41 pm #22370

Oberon is brilliantly simple. Think BASIC with object oriented features.

Well, I've never thought of BASIC as brilliant

If only Astrobe Oberon could target the ESP8266 mcu. It shouldn't be too hard for those with the know-how.

Of course not. And when someone does finally port Oberon to the ESP8266, it will be done in C.

btw - Astrobe isn't free.

- Fri Jul 03, 2015 2:52 pm #22382

Well, I've never thought of BASIC as brilliant

Actually I used BASIC to compare it's simplicity on the eyes, not it's capabilities.

Of course not. And when someone does finally port Oberon to the ESP8266, it will be done in C.

Hmmm. Why would one need to use C to make an Oberon target compiler for ESP8266? 'Porting' is probably the wrong term.

btw - Astrobe isn't free

True, but who in their right mind wants to work for free? There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Beside, it is very inexpensive if you have priced the professional MCU dev kits out there. Besides, Astrobe was created as a competitor to the professional dev kits (like Atmel). If Astrobe were to become popular in the hobbyist realm, this just might change.

I am VERY happy with the return on my $145 for the "personal" edition and plan to upgrade to pro soon as I can. The only drawback is that there are no targets in the 'mini MCU' crowd yet.

Oh, I said that the graphics demo (from the video) was 22.2kb. I was wrong. That is the graphics.mod (graphics lib) size. The application is actually 17kb. Look in the description on YouTube.

- Fri Jul 03, 2015 5:15 pm #22392

Well, I've never thought of BASIC as brilliant

Actually I used BASIC to compare it's simplicity on the eyes, not it's capabilities.

Eye of the beholder, I guess. BASIC looks ugly to this programmer.

And when someone does finally port Oberon to the ESP8266, it will be done in C.

Hmmm. Why would one need to use C to make an Oberon target compiler for ESP8266? 'Porting' is probably the wrong term.

Well, what WOULD you write a compiler in, then? (Don't say BASIC)

btw - Astrobe isn't free

... it is very inexpensive if you have priced the professional MCU dev kits out there. Besides, Astrobe was created as a competitor to the professional dev kits (like Atmel). If Astrobe were to become popular in the hobbyist realm, this just might change.

It's cool, but it's not worth any amount of money if it doesn't target processors we're interested in.

- Fri Jul 03, 2015 6:21 pm #22394 Hi Kenn,
There is Oberon the operating system, and Oberon the language. There is even the new Project Oberon which is a RISC OS which runs on an FPGA.

Where do you see anything involving C? Oberon is a full replacement for C. Oberon is not an interpreter of any sort like Java bytecode, Lua etc. Oberon creates pure native executables equivalent to C.

You download the @5mb Astrobe IDE (windows installer), run it, open 'Blink.mod', compile, and flash the 136 byte native executable *.bin file...all in under ten minutes. Even the Arduino IDE is massively complex in comparison.

Your probably saying "no way. can't be that simple.". Take ten minutes and give it a try. Seeing is believing. All that's needed is someone who understands the process and the internals of the ESP8266 Tensilica chip. I hope to get Chris Burrows at Astrobe involved here shortly to discuss the process involved to write new targets.

Again, I used BASIC as the contrast, concerning 'readability'. I, honestly, know nothing about BASIC except what I remember from when I was a kid with my Vic 20. But that is EXACTLY how Oberon 'feels'. You say 'wow. Ten minutes and I am actually programming something already'. But to say Oberon is like BASIC in any way functionally would be untrue. BASIC is an interpreted/scripting language, isn't it? Oberon would be functionally matched with C, or maybe you could argue C++. All the power of C, with a highly legible notation like Pascal...except further simplified...to give it a simplified feel like BASIC.

Please don't get me wrong, I am just hoping to develop some interest among some of you gurus out there that might see this as a challenge. It is certainly above my capabilities yet. I am sure Chris Burrows would be glad to assist in any ones efforts.

I know I sound like a salesman, but that's not the case. Just a genuinely satisfied user hoping to spread the word to more capable programmers. It's a shame that Oberon isn't more popular. It is a perfect fit though for these tiny MCU's. In fact, I might entertain the idea of buying someone a professional version out of my own pocket to set up the ESP8266 target.