Hey Walter, I really admire your work. I'm curious though, do you think D is potentially in danger of trying to do too many things? No one wants another mess like C++.
I do not think it is in danger, it already does too many things that make it a complex language. Similar with Object/Free Pascal and to some extent C# and certainly others i cannot think of right now.
These languages are like horses running on a straight line towards maximum complexity. It is just that C++ is at the front right now, but no horse has any inclination of stopping.
Not an exception really, there are many simple languages and Oberon-07 (the dialect linked) is indeed an extremely simple one. Go is another language that is simple. And of course C (that compiler developers abuse undefined behavior to win artificial benchmark games and making the life of everyone using C for practical purposes miserable is not a problem with the language itself but with the compilers that do such abuse).
This depends on if you see Oberon-07 as a different "version" of Oberon or as a different dialect belonging to the same family. Personally i see it as a different dialect instead of being the same language exactly because it removes functionality and isn't compatible with it.
It may not seem like a big difference, but it becomes more apparent when you consider how different all the Pascal dialects that are out there - some even from Niklaus Wirth himself - are.
Also IMO languages should not break backwards compatibility.
Wirth — at the age of 85, no less! — is actively working on Oberon stuff, like the compiler. Here's his "news" file, which is up to date as of May 31, 2019:
Are there shops that will take advantage of this stuff by limiting what features they use and following a certain style? For ex would a C++ team use some functional approach or a Rust style approach to ownership etc? Or it always just a mishmash?
