2 Mar
2025
2 Mar
'25
2:16 a.m.
On Sat, Mar 01, 2025 at 05:58:15PM -0800, Bakul Shah via TUHS wrote:
On Feb 28, 2025, at 4:16???PM, segaloco via TUHS
<tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote:
I took a look at the V language, not a fan. But I'm a grumpy old C
programmer and I tend to hate languages that change the syntax for
no good reason.
I would much prefer to see C evolved. Not like C++ but just better C.
It dismays me that people feel like they need to make a mark with some
new "better" syntax. C syntax is fine, it's well understood by a zillion
programmers. So why not evolve that syntax to a better C?
We did that with https://www.little-lang.org/index.html which is a compiled
C like language. There are a ton of extensions to C that just made sense
to me. It never caught on but it still stands as an example of how you
could take C syntax and extend it to be more useful. Why people don't
do that is a mystery to me.
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
Given that anything that obeys the ABI and has assembler entries to the kernel
can request services, it seems to me it would be possible to stand up a
user-land without C being present. Have any UNIXen ever done this after the
advent of C?
vinix is written in the V language and can have userland written in V as
well but so far the compiler compiles to c (so requires a c compiler) so
not sure it qualifies + its development seems to have stalled somewhat.
IIRC there is at least one v6 level (toy?) OS written in rust with a
rust only userland. May be for anything non-toy you'd have to provide
a C compatible API.
Personally I don't see much point in reimplementing a 50+ year old OS in
a new language; at least do something new and innovative (with unix
emulation for dusty decks) but ??\_(???)_/??