Hello language enthusiasts,

My background is that of a lowly consumer of languages, but I followed a
few links and here I am addressing you.  Plan 9 looks very interesting
on paper and I am sure in action as well.  I will further confess that I
have enjoyed such disparaged languages as C# and even VB.  My question
is as follows:

Why not have an intermediate language similar to MSIL but more suited to
your OS?  I have heard about the difference between stack based versus
register based architechtures, but I have not understood yet why that
stops you or some standards body from coming up with a set of language
primitives that permit other languages to be compiled to it.  The
compilers written for the actual languages would be very portable and
the compilers for the intermediate language would be simpler.

I personally don't have anything againg using the Mono or .Gnu stuff.  I
think the Mono stuff is more portable and more GUI oriented which I like
but I understand the fear of licensing issues.  When I see complaints
about C#, I think people miss the point that you can develop any
compiler targeting MSIL and you will have a portable language.  If
someone could either explain or refer me to an explanation of the
register versus stack based language problem as it applies to an
intermediate language, I would very much appreciate it.

Thanks,

Vlad