[TUHS] Hypothetical: Could MULTICS have been written in C, if available?

[Bakul Shah via TUHS]

On May 25, 2026, at 5:24 PM, Clem Cole via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Coming back to the question of PL/1 *vs. *C, I have a longer responce on
> quora:  https://www.quora.com/What-makes-the-C-language-powerful that I
> will crib here.   When PL/1 and Algol68 were being created, and frankly,
> later with Ada and others, there was always a tendency to go overboard.
> But to me, the less-is-more rule applies: C is powerful not only because of
> what is in the language but also because of what Dennis (and Ken) left out.

IMHO it is less less-is-more and more the *low-level* nature of C.
Didn't IBM too used a "high level" low level language PL/S for MVS?
Other languages like PL/M, ESPOL etc. allowed low leve access to machine
specific features. Other HLLs used for kernel coding likely provided
a machine specific way to access low level features.

Also recall that Sun used C++ for its Spring (research) OS. And no
one accuses C++ of "less-is-more"!