OSCON 2012 notes

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Saturday, July 21, 2012 19:13:20 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 14:41:05 +0200
> 
> Paulo Pinto <pjmlp at progtools.org> wrote:
> > Regarding systems programming, Go could actually play in the same
> > league as D
> 
> [...]
> 
> > The trick with Oberon, which Go also uses, is to have a special module
> > reckognised by the compiler with primitives to do the low tricks C
> > offers. Additionaly any function/method without body can be
> > implemented in Assembly. This is nothing new, Modula-2 already worked
> > like this.
> 
> If a language has to resort to such "outside-of-the-language" tricks
> like that to do system software, then it's just simply not a systems
> language.

I tend to agree. However, it's my understanding that when the Go folks talk 
about Go being a "systems language," they mean that it's meant for building 
large systems, not that it's meant for writing low-level stuff like kernels, 
which is what C++ and D mean when they call themselves systems languages. So, 
I believe that the core problem here is that the term is being used differently 
by different languages rather than Go claiming that they're a systems language 
in the C++/D sense when they have to rosert to outside of the language tricks. 
But I could be wrong about what they mean.

- Jonathan M Davis