"Systems programming" (was: Language Niches (long))

[Brendan Hahn]

claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird) wrote:
>Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote:
>                        .
>>AFAIK, all Unix system programming is still done in C.  (At least
>>that's true for the Unices I'm familiar with (SCO, Solaris,
>>BSD, Linux).

>Perlites occasionally make a serious pitch for this role.
>Java, Forth, and C++ have all briefly flared as possibili-
>ties.

You can do kernel stuff in C++ on a lot of systems, but it's often more
trouble than it's worth...kernel versions of the C++ runtime can be very
quirky.  NT is actually pretty nice for doing C++ drivers.  You could use
Objective-C on the old NeXT systems -- Apple has switched to a C++ IO
system, for better performance, but using a restricted subset of the
language.  Haven't tried it yet but I think it'll be nice.  Forth is
actually in very wide use, but at the sub-OS level -- any Open Firmware
system starts up running Forth, and if you want a boot driver for a new
storage adapter, say, you write it in Forth and put it in ROM on the card.

bhahn at transoft.mmangle.net   <-- unmangle address to reply