Working on an operating system that uses some of these modern / safer alternatives, the concerns around bootstrapping, lack of spec, lack of formal memory model

Working on an operating system that uses some of these modern / safer alternatives, the concerns around bootstrapping, lack of spec, lack of formal memory model, long compile times, and larger output binaries are valid. They are real and present challenges for us, that we choose to work against. It is currently extremely difficult to produce a binary of the size of bsd cat using these technologies, and very large amounts of work are needed to close that gap, if it even can be. In a new system you may not need cat though, but if you're a unix system with a heavy shell and textual basis, you do need lightweight versions of these things - light to build, light to run, and well integrated into the environment. What's the path out for unix systems? I have no idea, but at least as of today I have not seen a modern safe language that is ready to replace unix use cases. Maybe zig? It's hello world is at least under 10kb.