Python Operating System???

[Arich Chanachai]

Paul Rubin wrote:

> ...
>
>>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.
>  
>
So true, there was indeed a contextual reason for special hardware, and 
the context has since changed (dramatically).