Writing an OS for PC

[Billy Tanksley]

Andrew Bromage <bromage@cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:

_> Do you know FORTH ? Lisp ? ML ? Haskell ? BETA ? SELF ? Perl ? Icon ?
_> Have a try !

_Just a point here on efficience.  Would anyone here suggest that
_most of these languages could ever beat C for efficient code?

Yes.  It's absolutely certain, given a little weasel-wording.  :)

C is one of the worst possible languages to write efficient algorithms in,
due to its long compile-times (and many theoretical disadvantages which we
all know or we wouldn't be here etc).  Thus, although compiled C may be
faster than interpreted Forth (which it often, but not always, is),
for any two independantly developed programs, one in Forth and one in C, the
Forth one will outperform the C one.

I'm saying that although C may generate the best possible instruction
sequence for any given logical operation (no at all true), it causes
programmers to generate far poorer logical operations.

I've done a little work in Icon, but none in any of the others (although I
looked at Haskell).  I won't comment on them.  I like the small size of
Forth too much to spend long messing with the others.

-Billy
P.S.  Porting Forth to Geos is NOT easy.
P.P.S.  I'll ignore that crack about Forth not being expressive ;).