C/C++

I'm on the opinion C# would be THE language both for application developent and OS development if it was optimized to the degree of C/C++, allowed asm keyword for inline assembler, function calling convention mangling, forced inline keyword and native code generation.
Array bounds checking, the string implementation, and its clean syntax makes C# very neat, even better than Java since it allows gotos and pointers (not recommended maybe, but they SHOULD be even for a last resort).

(Although, in the case of writing new OS code, you'd first write all the memory management stuff before creating objects via the new instruction or threads, per example).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Arainach

Nowadays, when CPU time is cheap and coding time isn't, writing assembly is just plain stupid. Your code isn't portable, is more painful to debug and read, and the speed benefit is very negligible.

Isn't it stupid when one pays about 2x the price of a processor for a faster model, then happily wastes CPU cycles because the software isn't properly optimized?
ASM, used wisely, is used to optimize concrete areas of an application, not to develop entire applications (that's just overkill, and one could end up reinventing the square wheel if not careful).
As for portability, it's ok when an application is portable between OSes, but most times you aren't going outta the x86 architecture so it's not much of a deal.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Usually, such high requirements aren't due to high language coding but because of inadequate data structures and/or bloatware.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Arainach

I've ran OpenOffice 2.0 on Pentium-75s with 128MB of RAM.

OK. How many hours did it take to simply boot the application?.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Arainach

About 84 seconds. Most of that due to the piece-of-crap <4200RPM HD in the box.

84 seconds just for a text editor? I don't have such a patience. Plain and simple.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Arainach

MS Office XP took over 3 minutes on that box. 2003 wouldn't start for me. It was more a reflection on the system than the program. OO.org loads in under 5 seconds on my Pentium III 800Mhz/4200RPM HD laptop.

I'm not defending MS Office products here; actually I also use OpenOffice 2.0.
But a slow boot is a slow boot, whatever product you talk about.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?