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It would be a real shame if Google wasted this once in a decade or perhaps once in multiple decades opportunity to not have an OS written in a language other th
by mtgx 10y ago
It would be a real shame if Google wasted this once in a decade or perhaps once in multiple decades opportunity to not have an OS written in a language other than C++.
Also, it would be mind-boggling if they didn't actually fix the update problem this time, and if it wasn't a top 3 priority for the new OS.
- frozenport 10y agoIt's written in C. There is little beyond syntax that a different language can offer because a modern OS cannot afford features like garbage collection. Indeed, this was one of the research aims of MS's Singularity project.
- sametmax 10y agoThey could have written it in Rust. No garbage collection, more security guaranties. Easier to contribute to the code properly.
- frozenport 10y agoRust performed 3x slower and hacking around the language made it somewhat of a mess [1]. Much like Singularity, this is hardly a success story. Although Singularity was interesting from a research perspective nobody doubted that an OS could be written in Rust. https://scialex.github.io/reenix.pdf https://scialex.github.io/reenix.pdf
- steveklabnik 10y agoThat paper is very old, before Rust 1.0. There was also a lot of discussions about ways that they could have used Rust better at the time, IIRC. Today, there is no reason Rust should ever be 3x slower, especially in an OSdev context, where you currently have to use nightly.
- pathsjs 10y agoToo many negations, I can't parse. Do you want an OS written in C++ or not? :-)