> I guess a more direct answer to your question is that when you get down to the hardware, you have to deal with weirdo bit fields, volatile hardware registers,

> I guess a more direct answer to your question is that when you get down to the hardware, you have to deal with weirdo bit fields, volatile hardware registers, strange read/write ordering requirements, interlocks, and even some totally non-interlockable volatile stuff. C can do it (although I admit it uses language features not everyone sees every day). I agree with you that building an entire OS to interface with hardware without using _any_ unsafe code is, by some definition of the word, impossible. However that doesn't mean you must limit yourself to unsafe languages for the other 90% of the operating system code.