Oberon had POINTER TO, and acted in what you might expect from a TurboPascal.

Also, wrt pointers, the original Primos was written in Fortran IV, although it was later moved to the PL/I dialect PL/P.

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 12:13 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> Because it is constantly compared with C, C++, Java, and scripting
> languages. Its packages are sold as better than C header files, which
> is demonstrated in Russ' compile time video. It is a compiled language.
> Its syntax is not horribly divergent from C.

none of this line of reasoning bears on go's designer's
intentions.  and i would be surprised (shocked actually)
if a vm were omitted for language positioning reasons,
rather than technical ones.

> It has support for pointers, so I guess so. I'd guess it's somewhat
> easier than C++, where you have to have an implementation for new
> before you can do much of anything else very C++-like. That said,
> it does have a language runtime like C++, so I suspect it does need
> some setup before some features (such as threads) can be used.

support for pointers isn't a requirement (cf: oberon).

also there are many things that a language can subtily make
writing a kernel in that language very difficult or impossible.

given that go has a runtime, it's reasonable to ask if the
runtime can be prevented from bothering interrupt routines
and other critical sections.  (was this a problem with alef?)

- erik




--
And in the "Only Prolog programmers will find this funny" department:

Q: How many Prolog programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: No.
 -- Ovid

   "By cosmic rule, as day yields night, so winter summer, war peace, plenty famine. All things change. Air penetrates the lump of myrrh, until the joining bodies die and rise again in smoke called incense."

   "Men do not know how that which is drawn in different directions harmonises with itself. The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension like that of the bow and the lyre."

   "This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures"
-- Heraclitus