As an amusing aside, in the late sixties I was convinced that it was
feasible to write a
portable OS in a high level language (PL/I
being the best candidate at the time). It was (and still is) my estimate
that (except for device drivers, whose plethora makes up the bulk of
Linux) some 60% of an OS could be written in a HL language, the other
40% requiring Assembly.
For example, the code to do scheduling is architecture independent, the
code to
implement scheduling decisions (start/resume) a process
is architecture dependant.
Until the mid eighties, when Unix became well known as a viable,
portable, OS, nobody I knew agreed with me. It was for this
reason that for many years I did private contracting/development under
the name "Blue Sky Enterprises". See [blue sky project]?.
--Buz Cory
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