[smosher]

Personally I'd sooner map the somewhat fuzzier concept of "applications language" onto that supposed continuum instead. It would put Go in a clearer category, since it seems to compete with Java and Python better than it does with C.

I still don't imagine an OS being written in a non-systems application language, since you've got drivers and performance critical subsystems to write and things like GC to worry about from the apps-only languages.

[pjmlp]

Have a look at Spin or Native Oberon, just to name two operating systems written in GC enabled languages.

Before C existed, there were already operating systems written in PL/I and ALGOL, which provide better type safety and memory management as C or C++.

Unix and C success has regressed what meant to be a proper systems programming language.

There is even a paper from Adele Goldberg about this phenomena, unfortunately I cannot recall the title now.