From their quote it does represent a big limitation unfortunately. No loops limits the ability to do relatively simple string manipulations and iterate over oth

From their quote it does represent a big limitation unfortunately. No loops limits the ability to do relatively simple string manipulations and iterate over other object collections where the size isn't statically known. The best you can do is basically manually unroll loops up to a fixed size. For windows dtrace for example it prevents you from writing your own wide to narrow strong routine, as well as doing sub string matches. Also, enumerating bit enums and converting flags to strings. There's many more cases too of course. I can understand the design limitation to some extent. But using the same kernel tracing APIs then extending it with a more powerful, arguably potentially less secure language, was a primary motivator for why I did this research at all. Ebpf for example allows loops. I disagree with you that a reimplementation must follow the complete architecture of the system being reimplemented, that's quite a strict interpretation in my opinion. You're of course entitled to that, I hope it's interesting/useful regardless of terminology :)