alt Hacker NewsPlenty of OSes, since Xerox PARC days have been written in GC systems languages.
Interlisp-D, Smalltalk, Cedar, Topaz, Oberon, Active Oberon, Singularity, Midori, Ironclad
Go's runtime is written in Go.
The whole compiler toolchain, GC, compiler, linker, Assembler, is written in Go.
There are Go compilers for bare metal, no OS needed, like TinyGo, the runtime, written in Go is the OS.
I love the "you cannot write an OS in a GC language" discourse.
It isn't only a mainstream thing because everyone only cares about UNIX clones.
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> Go's runtime is written in Go. The whole compiler toolchain, GC, compiler, linker, Assembler, is written in Go.
There's some nuance to this. The runtime code uses specific compiler support and restrictions that are not ordinary Go - possible (or even done, like this case) ≠ ergonomic. No doubt of course that for the Go project, this is still a win.
The fact that people care a lot about Unix clones is significant, though. nine_k could have been more effective in arguing the point, but it seems like a strong point to argue. Do you think you Go is flexible enough to write a Unix clone with performance equivalent to a C-unix? If so, why has it not been done?