Python Operating System???

[Paul Rubin]

"Roose" <b at b.b> writes:
> But are you really going to write a virtual memory system in Python?  Are
> you going to write a file system, and a task scheduler in Python?  Are you
> going to have people write device drivers in Python? 

Do you know how virtual memory systems, file systems, task schedulers,
and device drivers actually work?  Have you ever written any of them?
What exactly do you think the obstacles are to writing them in Python?

I've written file systems in Python, and task schedulers in
Javascript, and they were fine for their purposes.  Virtual memory and
device drivers are just more of the same.

> > It doesn't prove anything of the sort.  The Lisp hardware was needed
> > for performance reasons, back in the day.
> 
> OK, then give me an example of Lisp OS that runs on a PC.  I would like to
> install it on my PC tomorrow.  Or maybe my Mac.  That was your whole point,
> originally, that since it could be done in Lisp, why not Python?

Huh?  That's a non-sequitur, nothing prevents you from running Lisp on
your PC or Mac.  The same issues issues that apply to OS code, also
apply to user code.  The Lisp machine hardware wasn't needed only to
make the OS run fast.  The Lisp machine was developed so that people
could deploy large user-level applications written in Lisp, and the
hardware was there to support those applications.  And given such a
good Lisp environment, there was no reason to think of writing the OS
in anything other than Lisp.

In fact, the reason the Lisp machine died off was because general
purpose workstation hardware (and later, PC-class hardware) became
fast enough to run Lisp applications without needing special purpose
CPU's.  That same PC hardware speed is what makes it possible to run
user applications in Python.