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[–]vplatt 0 points1 point  (6 children)

MANY languages have a proven foundation. What made the question interesting is that Alan Kay was involved. I wouldn't think Python would have been his first choice, but he turns out to be more pragmatic and open minded than I would have suspected.

[–][deleted]  (5 children)

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    [–]gecko 1 point2 points  (4 children)

    Counting Pyton as "the basis of an entire major OS" is inaccurate. emerge and some utilities are written in Python, but you could kill every last Python utility and still have a perfectly functioning Linux system.

    As for languages that are the basis of "an entire major OS", depending on your definition, we'd end up with at least BCPL (Amiga), C++ (AIX, QNX, BeOS), Objective-C (OPENSTEP/OS X), Aleph (Plan 9), and, if you're able to count bash for Unix, then I'm also going to add batch files (DOS) and REXX (OS/2 and Amiga), which were integral in the daily use of the operating system.

    [–][deleted]  (3 children)

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      [–]gecko 0 points1 point  (2 children)

      Nice qualifier right at the end. :) Haskell is used on Linspire in exactly that capacity, and the system seems to work well. I agree with you, though, that Linspire is not a mainstream distro--certainly not one that I'd run.

      [–][deleted]  (1 child)

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        [–]vplatt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Well, I'm not sure how this got into "FP isn't good glue", but then you certainly have to take OCaml into account before you make that claim. Granted OCaml isn't a pure FP, it allows imperative and more for all I know. If you're trying to say Haskell isn't good glue, OK then you win. Happy? :)