"grauzone" <n...@example.net> wrote in message news:gqh4su$2cb...@digitalmars.com... > Jarrett Billingsley wrote: >> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 2:49 PM, grauzone <n...@example.net> wrote: >>> Jarrett Billingsley wrote: >>>> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Nick Sabalausky <a...@a.a> wrote: >>>> >>>>> Besides, I'd think an OS written in D would certainly have the >>>>> potential >>>>> to >>>>> really shake up the current OS market. Not because people would say >>>>> "Oh, >>>>> wow, it's written in D", of course, but because the developers would >>>>> have >>>>> a >>>>> far easier time making it, well, good. >>>> *cough*www.xomb.org*cough* >>> Your point? Yes, we know that D can be used to write hobby kernels. >> >> No need to be hostile about it. I was just letting Nick know. > > It will never "shake up the current OS market", though. Also, I think the > programming language is not really relevant for how good an OS is. Linux > is doing fine with C. This too should probably go rather towards Nick.
Choice of language can certainly make a big difference in a product, OS or otherwise. For instance, (purely hypothetical example that conveniently ignores timeframe and overhead involved in porting to a different language) if Win98 had been written in something like C#, it would have been more reliable, released sooner (probably would have been "Win97" as originally intended), and required more memory and processing power to run. If OSX had been written in pure asm, it would have been leaner, faster, buggier, released later, and probably wouldn't have been ported to x86. If early versions of the PalmOS kernel were written Python, the old PalmPilots probably would have been painfuly slow. Doesn't matter what you're making, OS or not, the choice of language *certainly* carries repercussions throughout a project. Sure Linux is doing fine with C. So what? It could probably be doing a lot better with D. Also, I should emphasize that I never said D would or wouldn't "shake up the OS market", just that the potential was there, whether it be *if* a new OS was built ground-up in D or *if* an existing one was ported. My main point was just that D could certainly improve the overall development process of whatever OS used it, allowing things to advance faster, be more reliable, etc., and thus potentially give it a real leg up. If all the carpenters are building houses with wooden hammers, and Joe Shmoe comes along with his metal hammer, well, he may succeed or he may fail, but he would certainly have that extra advantage, and thus have at least the potential to "shake things up".