osimpa compared to C C osimpa ............................................................................ availability/cost $0-- and up Hey bro, spare change? generality good. Any app, much total, potentially (no FPU systems code stuff yet, etc.) runtime performance excellent good to unbeatable, i.e. as good as you productivity of an adept programmer good no track record, but should be comparable CPU coverage all desktops, plus 90% (386), potentially all register machines Install range excellent good any desktop OS any 386 with a 32 bit unix-style shell. Potentially any desktop OS/CPU. learn rate poor. Starts quirky, fair to good. Clear names, stays quirky. extremely interactive, proactive help, simple consistant syntax similar to the shell existing reuseable or example code an embarrassment of a few included tidbits riches install hassle nightmarish zero hassle on unix, needs Cygwin or similar on WinDoS, i.e. a nightmare smallness poor good compile/assemble speed fair to good pitiful (a stand-alone compembler could change that) customizability or extensibility of compiler/assembler "just isn't done" trivial for some things lustre maximally spiffy shabby Bell Labs, UNIX caused a splash on Slashdot under "It's funny. Laugh." internal simplicity poor fair I do not consider "readability" and "maintainability" to be sensible terms. "readable code" is an oxymoron, and maintainability is a combination of the above-listed factors, coding skill and style, and human project organization. I believe osimpa is already a better language than C for writing an OS. You can't write an OS entirely in C, and then all hell breaks loose. C's great genius is that it is nearly a portable assembler. osimpa gets, it appears to me, a bit closer to that Holy Grail. osimpa also has massively less resource dependancies itself, which makes a big difference when bootstrapping things from non-existance. You need a C compiler to install Gcc. Probably any C. Not good. This is closer to a re-license than a bootstrap. osimplay isn't like that. Rick Hohensee rickh@capaccess.org