3 ms·

Well, there are two types of people in this world 1. the type that do something 2. the type that claim they could do it better than the first group (this is b

by pawadu 10y ago

Well, there are two types of people in this world 1. the type that do something 2. the type that claim they could do it better than the first group (this is by no means limited to programming, it is for example pretty common in politics) So please show me an OS written in Go or Rust or Ruby or Python or Java that people can actually use for day-to-day tasks.

pjmlp 10y ago
If you pay me my monthly salary to prove you wrong, I will happily do it, should we discuss a work contract?
pcwalton 10y ago
I've been working full time for years on a browser written in Rust. Which category am I in? Yes, C++ is very entrenched. That is a problem. We should be fixing that.
- y_u_no_rust 10y ago
  I'm still waiting for my mozilla javascript phone bro Rust is a neat a project and all but it's still slowly moving out of neat toy territory
loup-vaillant 10y ago
There is such a thing as path dependence. C got ubiquitous because of reasons (UNIX?), and now we're stuck with it. Now the historical accident theory is pretty obvious: it could have been an Algol, Fortran derivative instead of C, if only UNIX used that as a basis. C itself could have been designed differently, and if so would probably have different flaws and qualities. Asking for a Rust/Go/Whatever OS is dishonest, because you know full well it will fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the underlying language's intrinsic qualities: even if that OS is great, nobody expect it to be so great we all have to switch away from Windows and Linux. Well, except maybe if we prove the correctness of the kernel, hence ensuring the absence of many vulnerabilities. Research is ongoing, I'd like to see where that goes.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  C got ubiquitous well before Linux, at least. I'd date it back to the '80s on microcomputers ( mostly meaning DOS) . Lots of Pascal, but Pascal really was an engineering constraint at the time if you were doing actual system programming. And back then, that was a serious consideration.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Not in Portugal, we were using mostly using Turbo Pascal. In the 80's using C on MS-DOS, was only seen by those that had UNIX at work or universities and wanted to work home. It wasn't even C, rather SmallC or any other K&R dialect. In any case, everyone that cared about performance was using TASM and MASM, writing everything in Assembly.
DonaldFisk 10y ago
Those who did something include the developers of Burroughs MCP, who used Algol 60; the developers of MULTICS, who used PL/1; the developers of Symbolics Genera, who used Lisp; and the developers of Oberon, who used the language Oberon. I go along with historical accident to account for Unix's success, though Richard Gabriel thought it was a case of Worse Is Better trumping The Right Thing.

by pawadu 10y ago

pjmlp 10y ago

If you pay me my monthly salary to prove you wrong, I will happily do it, should we discuss a work contract?

pcwalton 10y ago

I've been working full time for years on a browser written in Rust. Which category am I in? Yes, C++ is very entrenched. That is a problem. We should be fixing that.

y_u_no_rust 10y ago
I'm still waiting for my mozilla javascript phone bro Rust is a neat a project and all but it's still slowly moving out of neat toy territory

loup-vaillant 10y ago

There is such a thing as path dependence. C got ubiquitous because of reasons (UNIX?), and now we're stuck with it. Now the historical accident theory is pretty obvious: it could have been an Algol, Fortran derivative instead of C, if only UNIX used that as a basis. C itself could have been designed differently, and if so would probably have different flaws and qualities. Asking for a Rust/Go/Whatever OS is dishonest, because you know full well it will fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the underlying language's intrinsic qualities: even if that OS is great, nobody expect it to be so great we all have to switch away from Windows and Linux. Well, except maybe if we prove the correctness of the kernel, hence ensuring the absence of many vulnerabilities. Research is ongoing, I'd like to see where that goes.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
C got ubiquitous well before Linux, at least. I'd date it back to the '80s on microcomputers ( mostly meaning DOS) . Lots of Pascal, but Pascal really was an engineering constraint at the time if you were doing actual system programming. And back then, that was a serious consideration.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Not in Portugal, we were using mostly using Turbo Pascal. In the 80's using C on MS-DOS, was only seen by those that had UNIX at work or universities and wanted to work home. It wasn't even C, rather SmallC or any other K&R dialect. In any case, everyone that cared about performance was using TASM and MASM, writing everything in Assembly.

DonaldFisk 10y ago

Those who did something include the developers of Burroughs MCP, who used Algol 60; the developers of MULTICS, who used PL/1; the developers of Symbolics Genera, who used Lisp; and the developers of Oberon, who used the language Oberon. I go along with historical accident to account for Unix's success, though Richard Gabriel thought it was a case of Worse Is Better trumping The Right Thing.