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Why try to predict the future and forget the past? John McCarthy proposed GC in the 60s, and we had operating systems in the early 80s implemented in GCed lang
by kjs3 4y ago
Why try to predict the future and forget the past? John McCarthy proposed GC in the 60s, and we had operating systems in the early 80s implemented in GCed languages. See, for example, Symbolics Genera (lisp) or Smalltalk-80. Xerox Cedar/Mesa based OSes too. Pretty sure Perq POS was GCed (heavily enhanced Pascal) but don't remember for sure.
So, yes, if it makes sense, you can write drivers, operating systems, databases, browsers and games etc.
- orangetuba 4y agoWhy have all modern operating systems (that have more than 100 users) moved away from GCed languages?
- kjs3 4y agoI won't speak to 'all modern operating systems', nor 'more than 100 users', because who really knows how to enumerate either of those. But given the OSes that the vast if not overwhelming majority of people use, 'because C' seems like the easy answer.