Re: Interesting article on the adoption of Software Security

[ljknews <ljknews () mac com>]

At 2:00 PM -0700 6/10/04, Dana Epp wrote:
> Ok, lets turn the tables a bit here. We talked about this a bit back last December when I said that you need to use 
> the right tool for the right job, and to quit beating on C.
>
> For those of us who write kernel mode / ring0 code, what language are you suggesting we write in? Name a good typesafe 
> language that you have PRACTICALLY seen to write kernel mode code in. Especially on Windows and the Linux platform. I 
> am not trying to fuel the argument over which language is better, it comes down to the right tool for the right job. I 
> know back in December ljknews suggested PL/I and Ada, but who has actually seen production code in either Windows or 
> Linux using it?

Restricting your domain of inquiry to C-centric operating systems
is not exactly a reasonable set of ground rules.  This is, after all,
not a mailing list restricted to Windows and Linux.  Even this _topic_
is not restricted to Windows and Linux. As an advocate of strongly typed languages, I do not use either (causality 
speculation is left to the
reader).

If you want to look for worked examples of operating systems in strongly
typed languages, consider Multics, which was responsible for popularizing
ring structures for operating systems.  I used Dockmaster, but never did
any programming on Multics.

(In case anyone is unaware, Multics was written in PL/I.)