An interpreter isn't a fair comparison though - in assembly you can use a few tricks like threaded code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threaded_code http://en.wi

An interpreter isn't a fair comparison though - in assembly you can use a few tricks like threaded code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threaded_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threaded_code) to get a big speed boost, but these techniques aren't really broadly applicable to programs generally. And in any case, it's still not an argument for writing an entire OS in assembly, but rather only a few important segments of the code.