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Achieving a higher degree of abstraction, more straightforward availability of system resources to programmers, higher levels of code reuse. Present-day system
by gloob 17y ago
Achieving a higher degree of abstraction, more straightforward availability of system resources to programmers, higher levels of code reuse.
Present-day system programmers seem to be able to build decent enough operating systems and the like at the level of abstraction C provides, and I suspect that most would consider straightforward management of system resources to be higher priority than straightforward availability of them.
I will concede the possibility that some unambiguously-better system could be written in a higher-level language. However, until evidence demonstrates that it actually can be done, that remains just a possibility, and one with very real and significant costs. Those costs are not, in the view of many system programmers, worth it.
- stcredzero 17y agoI will concede the possibility that some unambiguously-better system could be written in a higher-level language. However, until evidence demonstrates that it actually can be done, that remains just a possibility Already happened: Symbolics Lisp Machines. (Modulo a few decades of programming practice not available to inform the Lisp Machines.) I suspect that Go could get us there. Interfaces would allow for a higher degree of abstraction. The language would offer much cleaner concurrency. All the memory management cruft would be gone. In such an environment, many things that are now esoteric would become the realm of ordinary programming. I think there is much to be gained.