Brief survey of languages used for systems implementation

Abstract

This paper provides a brief survey of languages used for developing operating systems. The paper discusses the issues involved in deciding on the use of a higher level language, including the technical, management, psychological factors, and the advantages and disadvantages. The major part of the paper discusses specific languages which have been used, and the major systems which have been developed using them. General comments and future trends are indicated, with a discussion of desirable characteristics, the non-universality of a single systems programming language, system specification languages, machine independence, and operating system writing systems. An appendix lists languages known to have been used for writing either compilers and/or operating systems, and indicates references for them.