From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:49:00 -0800 Message-ID: From: Roman Shaposhnik To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Subject: Re: [9fans] Go Topicbox-Message-UUID: 9a1b6ff2-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 8:37 AM, erik quanstrom 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.