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Modula-2 is the road not taken for me. It's such a pity that language didn't get the chance that it deserved.


It sorta did as Ada, tho Ada is a much bigger language than M2 (or Pascal)[1]. There was at least one Ada-83 compiler for DOS (Janus), but it was a tight fit and a miserable experience. To me, the missed opportunity was Modula-3; much of what was nifty about Ada (and other things) in a smaller package.

[1] People often forget how compact a language Pascal (and somewhat M2) is. It comfortable self-hosts on 8-bit machines with a few dozen K (not M) of memory. It does an OK job even on the 6502 (admittedly, p-code). There was even a cross compiler for the 8051.


I think that D and C# are the right descendents to Modula-3, and many aren't still unaware of how much C# has improved for low level programming tasks.

Unfortunely its adoption window has passed by, although there is a guy keeping it going on Github, from the official Critical Mass compiler that once existed,

https://github.com/modula3/cm3




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