Enjoying this book

[dukester]

"Programming in Modula-3 - An Introduction in Programming with Style"
by Böszörményi & Weich

This book is my first ever formal intro to CS.
I bought my first computer in 1981 - an Apple ][e clone from Taiwan, sporting a z80 cpu as well as the 6502. I learned enough z80 assembly to be dangerous. :) From Byte magazine I think.

Next learned Perl4 because I wanted to crank out my own intranet with a database backend. Got a modem and started "gophering" for resources. Fidonet came in handy.

learned some C; learned some Lisp (newLisp, scheme); tried Oberon Native; like Ulm's Oberon-2 compiler - yet never with any formal training.

Now, here I am digging into Modula-3. The above book is great so far. I would have liked to find Harbison's book to read online somewhere. No chancey!

Looking forward to groking CM3!

[dukester]

Another great resource - IMHO - for a Modula-3 noob:
https://cs.fit.edu/~ryan/m3/tutorial/html/m3.html

[MarcusE1W]

Today I have found this web site:

https://annas-archive.org/md5/d182b629915d46c838b2d70ec1b22aca

[dukester]

In the book there is an example:

MODULE Hello EXPORTS Main;
IMPORT SIO;
BEGIN
SIO.PutText("Hello, world!\n")
END Hello.

There does not appear to be any m3makefile used!
There does not seem to be a Main.m3 file!
What implementation of m3 are they using?
Can this code also be run with cm3, after changing SIO to IO?

[mikanystrom-intel]

Thanks!! Got it! Either there exists an actual Main.m3 file or <some-filename.m3> is "declared" as "Main" by MODULE EXPORTS Main;

Is that correct?

Just to add some context! I'm 76 yrs old next month. I'm NOT pursuing a IT career whatsoever - just trying to keep the grey cells from dying off too quickly. Chemo for leukemia not helping matters at all. I liked Oberon-2 but M3 with its standalone compiler is more attractive and versatile. If all else fails, I can always fall back on Free Pascal to tinker around with. Thanks a bunch for your input!

You are right, you want exactly one module that exports Main.

I see! Well, you know, an "amateur" is someone who loves what he's doing. Do enjoy yourself learning. You might want to look at the Scheme book, then. It's fun! (And definitely exercises the gray cells.) Free, as well!

[mikanystrom-intel]

and yeah if your MODULE doesn't have EXPORTS in the title, it by default exports its own interface. So you could just have "MODULE Main;" and be done with it. The reason to have a different name for Main is so you don't have lots of files all called Main.m3 but doing different things. (If that bothers you---it doesn't really bother me.)

[dukester]

Got it! Main.m3 doesn't bother me as long as they're segregated in different "project" directories. I'm also messing around with Chicken Scheme. I have the SICP book. I once thought that Eiffel would be "my language". However, the open source implementations are immature with poor docs. Could not find a simple, comprehensive tutorial for it. The quest continues!

BTW, you mentioned (up thread) "quake" in context of m3make. What's this "quake"? Not the game Quake?

[mikanystrom-intel]

Got it! Main.m3 doesn't bother me as long as they're segregated in different "project" directories. I'm also messing around with Chicken Scheme. I have the SICP book. I once thought that Eiffel would be "my language". However, the open source implementations are immature with poor docs. Could not find a simple, comprehensive tutorial for it. The quest continues!

BTW, you mentioned (up thread) "quake" in context of m3make. What's this "quake"? Not the game Quake?

haha, no.. quake is just the name of the language that m3makefiles are written in. It predates the game Quake by a couple of years :-)

docs for quake (may be somewhat out of date---check m3makefiles in the cm3 repo for working examples)

https://www.opencm3.net/doc/help/cm3/quake.html

[dukester]

Thanks for the link! Never played Quake and couldn't grok what a game engine had to do with M3. LOL Slowly getting the hang of it all. Installing Liberty-Eiffel at the moment. Might fry the grey cells anyway! :D

[RodneyBates]

On 2/24/23 22:19, Duke Normandin wrote: In the book there is an example: |MODULE Hello EXPORTS Main; IMPORT SIO; BEGIN SIO.PutText("Hello, world!\n") END Hello. | There does not appear to be any m3makefile used!

If there is no file named m3makefile in your src directory, CM3 will try to infer what to do, just from what files it finds in there.  I haven't tried to provoke this to see just how far it will work, but I'm very sure it will work fine if all you have are same-named interface/module pairs and one module named Main, or probably, one module named something else but that exports Main. Stuff like instantiations might be doubtful, and maybe modules that export >1 interface.  Definitely not importing interfaces that are neither in src nor in the standard precompiled libraries libm3 or libm3core. For anything very big, even if simple, I usually provide an m3makefile.  The one place I have seen unexpected trouble without one is if there are leftover .i3 or .m3 files in src that I didn't want to be part of what is compiled.

…

There does not seem to be a Main.m3 file! What implementation of m3 are they using? Can this code also be run with cm3, after changing SIO to IO? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#806 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABSVZNE3ULN7AGEFUE37TLLWZGB6FANCNFSM5LD6JG5Q>. You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[dukester]

Thanks for the clarification. I just cranked out a zsh script that creates a M3 project for me. It asks a few questions then creates required directories and the Main.m3 and m3makefile files AND launches emacs with those files. Slick as snot! LOL

[RodneyBates]

On 2/25/23 07:01, Duke Normandin wrote: Those books are way too expensive for a niche language that is almost dead. Sad but true.

The text of the green book was recently made available on line, after getting the copyright owner(s) consent. I don't have the URL in front of me, but probably someone here can help immediately, or I can look for it. If you really want paper, I have a few copies too.

…

At any rate, how would I go about compiling this exact code with CM3? |MODULE HelloWorld EXPORTS Main; IMPORT IO; BEGIN IO.Put("Hello World\n") END HelloWorld. | HelloWorld.m3 only? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#806 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABSVZNHW2G6UO23NASKOH3DWZH7CZANCNFSM5LD6JG5Q>. You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[dukester]

Thanks Rodney! Online would be swell. I'll google for it.

[dukester]

Can't find it!

[olaf-wagner]

On 25 Feb 2023, at 23:02, Duke Normandin wrote: Can't find it!

https://archive.org/details/systems-programming-with-modula-3/page/x/mode/2up

…

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[dukester]

Is that the "green book" Rodney was talking about? I thought Harbison had written it. I DLed it anyway - Thank You!!