Re: Broken dream of mine :(

[Lluis]

El Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 03:30:08PM +0530, arnuld uttre ens deleit� amb les 
seg�ents paraules:
>  How many of you think that using C is still a good idea ?  There is
> one concept in Lisp. When we want to do something then we can bend the
> language according to our design and that is possible because Lisp is
> the programmable programming language. But I can not use Lisp to write
> an OS, so BitC was my hope. I think a project as complex as Hurd needs
> to use a language that is specifically designed for that project, that
> can work according to the basic design of the OS not the other way
> around. Do you think using C fits that criteria for Hurd ?

First, I'd like to separate the whole sw stack in a few layers:
    - hw interactions (aka low-level code typically programmed in asm in C-based
      projects)
    - kernel code (first-class system-wide abstractions)
    - system code (services/abstractions hurd builds on top of any kernel it is
      using as a substrate)
    - other software (mainly user applications and daemons)

So now, my question would be which features you don't like of a specific
language (C in this case), and in the context of which "layer"?

Not that I'm very knowleadgeable in BitC (I'd say I have no knowledge at all),
but I'm curious of which are the itches you want to scratch, and more important,
which are they tradeoffs.

Of course, analyzing the tradeoffs would require an agreement on a list of
quantifiable features and their relative weight.

Read you,
    Lluis

-- 
 "And it's much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn
 something new, the whole world becomes that much richer."
 -- The Princess of Pure Reason, as told by Norton Juster in The Phantom
 Tollbooth