Message-ID: <47502595.4020007@redhat.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:00:37 -0500
From: Chris Snook <csnook@redhat.com>
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To: Ben.Crowhurst@stellatravel.co.uk
CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Kernel Development & Objective-C
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Ben Crowhurst wrote:
> Has Objective-C ever been considered for kernel development?

No.  Kernel programming requires what is essentially assembly language with a 
lot of syntactic sugar, which C provides.  Higher-level languages abstract away 
too much detail to be suitable for the sort of bit-perfect control you need when 
you're directly controlling bare metal.  You can still use object-oriented 
programming techniques in C, and we do this all the time in the kernel, but we 
do so with more fine-grained explicit control than a language like Objective-C 
would give us.  More to the point, if we tried to use Objective-C, we'd find 
ourselves needing to fall back to C-style explicitness so often that it wouldn't 
be worth the trouble.

In other news, I hear Hurd boots again!

	-- Chris
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