Why are ASM hobby OS more successful than other languages ?

[guyfawkes]

Are we ever getting to a conclusion on any such topics? Since it is obvious that we aren't, what is the purpose of having this discussion?

Everyone does not need to agree, we share our views, then people can make there own minds up.
Give them both sides of the story, but do not try to lock people out, just because you do not agree with them.

This is the "General Ramblings" part of the forum.
Lets brain storm and think out of the box and come up with new ideas.
This is the only advantage hobby OS have, is to try new things.
Ask the ?, why do we need to do something this way.

[Lithorien]

It's patent nonsense to say that a programming language is what determines the success of a hobby OS project. It's impossible for that to be the deciding factor - it's like saying, "Whelp, you can only ever write one form of an application, and competition can never happen."

No.

A project's success is a direct representation of the motivation of the people working on the project. Period. It's their ideas, love for what they are doing, creativity, and general desire to work hard and not give into the, "Well, I can just use X," mentality that most people have. A kernel written in ASM has as much chance of failing as one written in C, or C++, or BASIC, or Perl, or any other language you can think of! It just depends on the people involved with the project.

[guyfawkes]

It's patent nonsense to say that a programming language is what determines the success of a hobby OS project. It's impossible for that to be the deciding factor - it's like saying, "Whelp, you can only ever write one form of an application, and competition can never happen."

No.

A project's success is a direct representation of the motivation of the people working on the project. Period. It's their ideas, love for what they are doing, creativity, and general desire to work hard and not give into the, "Well, I can just use X," mentality that most people have. A kernel written in ASM has as much chance of failing as one written in C, or C++, or BASIC, or Perl, or any other language you can think of! It just depends on the people involved with the project.

I agree
So this quote is wrong then ?.

If you weigh up the advantages (faster were it matters) and disadvantages (slower were it doesn't matter, longer development time, no portability); the most obvious choice is to do everything you can in something like C and then worry about optimising small parts in assembly later (after you've done profiling, etc).

[guyfawkes]

So this quote is wrong then ?

No, it is irrelevant. Just as this whole discussion is.

So why do you waste your time, posting in irrelevant posts ?

[Solar]

So this quote is wrong then ?.

No, but how you placed it underlines a general impression that the whole discussion is, at least partly, motivated by a desire to provoke, flaunt, and generally being argumentative.

Or, to return to the initial posting:

So why are most of the long team successful hobby OS's, all seem to be coded in ASM ?

Look up "loaded question."

Mods: Please close this.

[Brendan]

Hi,

Mods: Please close this.

That would be the easiest thing to do in the short-term; and the worst thing to do in the long-term. I'm guessing that by the time it reaches 12 pages, at least one of you may have learnt not to feed trolls, and when that happens I would've made a small but lasting victory.


Cheers,

Brendan

[AJ]

Hi,

I tend to be a bit trigger happy on the "Lock Thread" button if I see a thread going bad. This time, I'll watch for Brendan's victory with interest

Cheers,
Adam

[Kevin]

Now this is getting boring, how can you expect good trolling when the topic is about the relevance of postings?

I think we should rather take the original question and make it a bit more interesting: Why is the difference in success between Pascal and ASM OSes greater than that between C and C++ ones - especially if the latter have their opening braces on a new line?

SCNR.

[guyfawkes]

Yes lock the post, i am bored with it now, thanks everyone for you views

[VolTeK]

[Chandra]

Yes lock the post, i am bored with it now, thanks everyone for you views

Too bad. I was just getting started.

That would be the easiest thing to do in the short-term; and the worst thing to do in the long-term. I'm guessing that by the time it reaches 12 pages, at least one of you may have learnt not to feed trolls

I doubt if that is ever going to happen. The only possible end I can think of is, when you're exhausted typing millions of lines of post and finally your finger begs for a rest.

Hi,

I tend to be a bit trigger happy on the "Lock Thread" button if I see a thread going bad. This time, I'll watch for Brendan's victory with interest

Cheers,
Adam

Mods on a party?

[Rusky]

If C was made to write UNIX, then UNIX is the only OS you can write in C. Discuss.

Definitely true to an extent. C makes it difficult to go too far from unix-style hardware-isolated processes in userspace, and this dictates a lot of hardware design today. It also seems to have had a large effect on languages such as Java and C#, the basis for most managed OS experiments now, in that they've stuck with, for example, NullPointerExceptions over explicit optional types.

[Solar]

If C was made to write UNIX, then UNIX is the only OS you can write in C. Discuss.

Definitely true to an extent. C makes it difficult to go too far from unix-style hardware-isolated processes in userspace...

AmigaOS, written in C, microkernel / hybrid architecture, no MMU / memory protection.

RISC OS, written in Basic, C, and C++, single user / co-operative multitasking.

Just two distinctly un-Unix-like operating systems that were written in C.

(Don't know enough about pre-X MacOS to comment on that noteworthy.)

Don't you recognize a tongue-in-cheek flamebait when you see one?

It also seems to have had a large effect on languages such as Java and C#, the basis for most managed OS experiments now, in that they've stuck with, for example, NullPointerExceptions over explicit optional types.

I demand a "ROTFL" type smiley like this one for this board. Conspiracy theories like this one certainly deserve one.

[Owen]

(Don't know enough about pre-X MacOS to comment on that noteworthy.)

System 1 was M68K ASM for size; stayed substantially that throughout lifetime. I expect later versions added some Pascal, and even later verisons significant quantities C, with the OS transitioning in that direction over time (You can bet that by the time of the OS X transition lots of the top level components were C for portability to OS X, and lots of the bottom level components were C or PPC ASM for performance). With the PowerPC transition there was probably a bunch of PPC ASM added, substantially in the nanokernel and M68K emulator.

Quite a complex system, with 3 mutually incompatible but interoperable execution models (Classic 68K, CFM-68K and CFM-PPC)

[Rusky]

"to an extent," guys, "to an extent." AmigaOS, RISC OS, and Mac OS all had varying degrees of problems caused by C's design. That's all I was pointing out.

Conspiracy theories like this one certainly deserve one.

How is that a conspiracy theory? I'm not attributing anything to any hidden plots, merely the obvious trail of inspiration from C -> C++ -> Java -> C# that neatly left out any alternatives to compiler-unchecked null pointers.