Oberon2

Oberon-2 is a programming language in the Oberon family, designed as an extension of Oberon 88 to incorporate object-oriented programming while preserving the language’s simple, modular design. It was developed in the early 1990s under the auspices of Niklaus Wirth and, in particular, Hanspeter Mössenböck, building on the Oberon concept used at ETH Zurich and in related environments.

Oberon-2 adds object-oriented features by extending Oberon’s type system with records that can have associated methods, and with type extension to support inheritance-like behavior and polymorphism. Methods can be defined for record types, and dynamic binding allows the correct method to be invoked at run time. The language maintains Oberon’s emphasis on a small, coherent set of constructs, strong typing, and a module-based structure for separate compilation. This combination aims to offer the benefits of object orientation without sacrificing the simplicity and efficiency that Oberon is known for.

In terms of usage and ecosystem, Oberon-2 has been implemented in several compilers and toolchains for different platforms, notably in environments associated with the Oberon community and academic projects. While it never achieved mainstream popularity, it influenced later members of the Oberon family, including Oberon-3, and contributed to the broader exploration of object-oriented features within minimalistic, strongly typed languages.

Oberon-2 is primarily of historical and educational interest today. It is cited as a notable step in the evolution of the Oberon language concept, illustrating how object-oriented concepts were integrated into a compact, module-driven language design.