2 ms·

I seem to recall someone, perhaps Alan Kay (or another person familiar with Smalltalk, Lisp, etc.), saying something like "operating systems are only necessary

I seem to recall someone, perhaps Alan Kay (or another person familiar with Smalltalk, Lisp, etc.), saying something like "operating systems are only necessary when your programming language/environment is deficient; ideally you shouldn't have one." I'm unsurprised that Moore, who invented his own complete-machine programming environment, would concur.

xkriva11 3y ago
"An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one." -- Dan Ingalls
- musicale 3y ago
  Yes! The brilliant Dan Ingalls - an inspiration to us all. Thanks for finding the exact quote. I think he also said something like "I never really wanted to program in a language/environment that wasn't (as good as?) Smalltalk." So he (and his colleague(s)) ported Smalltalk into web browsers, used it for system programming, etc. Which brings me to this web site, curated by the man himself: https://smalltalkzoo.thechm.org https://smalltalkzoo.thechm.org