Re: [9fans] Go

[Roman Shaposhnik <roman@shaposhnik.org>]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 8:37 AM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
>> > Speaking of VMs (and Limbo) -- I'm wondering if Go is eventually going
>> > to have it anyway. Any reason not to?
>>
>> It can be perceived as a competitor to C if it has a runtime, but not
>> if it has a VM. So I don't think it would grow one.
>
> why do you think the goal is to be
> perceived as a competitor to c?

Good question. In fact, I'd say any language that has a non-trivial
runtime library is not actually competing with C. C is a portable assembler
and that's why I, personally, like it so much -- its runtime is pure hardware
(both physical and virtual).

To some extent -- that's the reason I'm asking my VM question. I think any
non-trivial runtime is VM envy. Besides with JIT like capabilities you can
actually run faster in a VM setting.

> one thing that's not clear to me from
> the faq (perhaps it's clarified in robs talk?)
> and i haven't worked out for myself yet, is if
> one could write operating system code in
> go.  and if so, what would the language
> restrictions be.

If what you mean is "writing a kernel" then my take so far
is -- garbage collection and concurrency support might get
in the way. However, as always, I'd be very curious to find out
Russ' take on it.

Thanks,
Roman.