On: Why not port the Linux kernel to Common Lisp? (2009)

[mburns]

That idiom doesn't apply to this situation.

[codex → mburns]

Doesn't implementing a kernel in LISP really just move the interesting bits into the LISP GC, compiler, and runtime?

[betterunix → codex]

What makes you think that those bits cannot be written in Lisp? Keep in mind that entire OSes were written in Lisp in the 70s and 80s.

[mburns → codex]

No more so than writing a kernel in C moves the interesting bits into the compiler. LISP OS's have been made before, and there is no reason one couldn't be written again that looks UNIX-like.

The networking stack, device drivers, bootloader, etc, all need to be written in much the same way they would in a C-written kernel.