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Programming Languages Will Become OSes

Posted by michael on from the i-run-perl-OS-5 dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "A couple of months ago, at the Lightweight Languages Workshop 2002, Matthew Flat made a premise in his talk: Operating systems and programming languages are the same thing (at least 'mathematically speaking'). I find this interesting and has a lot of truth in it. Both OS and PL are platforms on which other programs run. Both are virtualizing machines. Both make it easier for people to write applications (by providing API, abstractions, frameworks, etc.)"

4 of 456 comments (clear)

  1. Oberon anybody? by sofist · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just remember the past. Oberon was an OS an a PL at the same time and I think most of the readers didn't ever heard about it...

    1. Re:Oberon anybody? by CoolVibe · · Score: 4, Informative
      Oberon? Smalltalk! Now there's something you could turn into an OS.

      Although, Oberon is not the past. It's still being actively developed, in both it's OS and PL incarnation.

  2. Behind the times? by Mordant · · Score: 3, Informative

    I guess Mr. Flat (what a name!) hasn't ever heard of the LISP Machine..

  3. Re:Going Forth? by Alex+Belits · · Score: 3, Informative

    What is the standard C library except an API specification to an OS?

    Standard C library is not a standard library of C language for Unix, it's a standard library of the Unix system that is used with C language (and every other language on Unix). Of course, for applications portability purpose it was ported to other systems, however it's still not really a part of the language design -- say, variable arguments list is a part of C design, but [v[s[n]]]printf strictly speaking isn't.

    --
    Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.