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Given issues like this, and how talented the kernel guys are ... why haven't they written a C compiler? (Not meant to rant; serious question -- we wrote silly C compilers for class; seems like programmers with real talent should be able to write real, industry strength C compilers, especially if it only needs to support C, and not C++/Java/ObjC/...)

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It's an intriguing idea to have a compiler designed for kernel code, and it has been proposed before: http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Kernel/2009-04/msg1...

I think (but this is just a guess) that a production multi-platform c compiler is as hard as a kernel to get right (or at least in the same order of magnited) and fast enough to be useful, so I think it's more of a "there is no need for NIH" attitude.

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