On 11 July 2012 15:27, Casey Ransberger <casey.obrien.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> Below.
>
> On Jul 11, 2012, at 6:46 AM, Stefan Marr <smalltalk at stefan-marr.de> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 11 Jul 2012, at 15:29, Casey Ransberger wrote:
>>
>>> After all: an operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language.
>>>
>>>
>>> Should there be one?
>>
>> No, there shouldn't be one: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/
>> Singularity is much more a high-level language [VM] than it is a classical OS.
>>
>> Ah, but oops, it's from Microsoft...
>>
>> --
>> Stefan Marr
>> Software Languages Lab
>> Vrije Universiteit Brussel
>> Pleinlaan 2 / B-1050 Brussels / Belgium
>> http://soft.vub.ac.be/~smarr
>> Phone: +32 2 629 2974
>> Fax:   +32 2 629 3525
>
> Most of my friends hail from Microsoft now. All of them have quit the company and taken options at Seattle startups.
>
> Singularity is pretty cool except... like most MS research projects, it probably won't ever leave the lab.
>
> Their research arm is (in that modern sort-of way) really great. But they tend to make (at the end of the day) big ass computer tables which people kind of laugh at as useless. The real problem with Microsoft Research, in your present intrepid author's meaningless opinion, is that they *don't ever ship anything that anyone wants or needs.*

Largely I agree. They do tend to fund interesting languages though: F#
and Haskell are both interesting, practical languages. (No, really.)
Of course, that might not fulfil the "anyone wants" part. Side effect
free programming? Bah!

frank

> And Apple sold out the geeks. Welcome to 1984, ladies and gentlemen!
>
> ;)
>
> What's the alternative? Shanty towns both. Linux and BSD. I say: let's get rid of both.
>
> C