Why don\t we rewrite the Linux kernel in C++?
• (ADB) Again, this has to do with practical and theoretical reasons. On the practical side, when Linux got started gcc didn”t have an efficient C++ implementation, and some people would argue that even today it doesn”t. Also there are many more C programmers than C++ programmers around. On theoretical grounds, examples of OS”s implemented in Object Oriented languages are rare (Java-OS and Oberon System 3 come to mind), and the advantages of this approach are not quite clear cut (for OS design, that is; for GUI implementation KDE is a good example that C++ beats plain C any day). • (REW) In the dark old days, in the time that most of you hadn”t even heard of the word “Linux”, the kernel was once modified to be compiled under g++. That lasted for a few revisions. People complained about the performance drop. It turned out that compiling a piece of C code with g++ would give you worse code. It shouldn”t have made a difference, but it did. Been there, done that. • (REG) Today (Nov-20
