Microsoft May be Working On New Non-Windows OS
Several reports published on Monday reveal that Microsoft is currently writing a new computer programing language, and could be using that language to generate a second operating system that is not related to Windows.
The new language was revealed by a Microsoft researcher named Jim Duffy on Friday who said that nothing secretive is going on, that all he is describing in his blog is pure research.
"As is hopefully clear from my bio, the language I describe below is a research effort, nothing more, nothing less. Think of me as an MSR guy publishing a paper, it's just on my blog instead [of] appearing in PLDI proceedings," Duffy writes on his blog.
The blog heated up talk about Microsoft's Midori project, a supposed non-Windows-based operating system. Unnamed sources claim that this platform has come out of incubation mode and tossed into the Unified Operating System group headed by Executive Vice President Terry Myerson.
ZDNet reports that Microsoft officials gave the green light for a number of Midori team members to come forward and produce a few details. Duffy is supposedly one of those people, who reportedly helped build both the operating system and the new language simultaneously.
Sources say this new language is codenamed "M#," or M sharp; Duffy names this new language as "C# for Systems Programming." Sources also claim that M# is an extension of Microsoft's C#, and reportedly grew out of Sing#, which is the system language of Microsoft's Research Singularity OS.
There's a possibility the M# platform will go open-source.
ZDNet reports that a "skunkworks" team began working on Midori since at least 2008. The project was originally "championed" by Microsoft CTO Eric Rudder, and the team itself consisted of all-star Microsoft veterans, including Duffy. The project also had several developers pulled in from the outside.
Ultimately, what's expected to happen is that parts of this operating system will be pulled out to be used in Windows 9 and beyond.

Theoretically, it would be less vulnerable to a lot of common security vulnerabilities and exploits.
From a practical standpoint, though, it's more of a toy for CompSci people than a practical operating environment... Though, if a person can get by nowadays with just a smartphone, there's no reason that this wouldn't be just fine for most people, even before it matures and gains software support.
Altera Stratix 10... with quad cores Cortex ARM-53 x64 bit MCU in it..
Altera Stratix 10... with quad cores Cortex ARM-53 x64 bit MCU in it..
There are lots of things an FPGA is great for, but I wouldn't waste one to re-invent the wheel.
A simple example who wants to keep track of pointers today? Or before then registers? No one ... you let the language handle these sort of details ... and focus on how can I say with one function tell the program to launch music when program opens up...
I'm not sure why you thought that, but that's almost the opposite of the .NET framework's design goal. The framework was actually launched with several languages, and new ones (like F#) have been added since, while others (like J#) have been deprecated. The point was to create a single compile target (MSIL) for all supported languages, and have the MSIL run in a virtual machine (the CLR), which would provide common services and interoperability between code regardless of the (.NET) language the original code was written in. It's evident that while the .NET framework is useful for high-level programming, it's not so useful for low-level programming (Windows device drivers are still written in unmanaged code, for example). I have no idea if bringing managed code to low-level programming will work out, but it's certainly not a case of Microsoft backpedaling on any .NET promises (and there has been plenty of that from Microsoft elsewhere... e.g., WPF and Silverlight)
I'm dating myself here but does anyone remember Microsoft Bob from the early 90's?
Seriously though, whoever said managed code is less vulnerable is a jabroni.
I suspect they might grab some functionality from the XBOX One in terms of voice commands. However, I don't think the keyboard and mouse are doomed.
This language already exists, its known as ... wait for it ... C. Any real systems language has unsafe memory operations and registers, learn to program well and deal with it.