[Rohansi]

You actually can use it for embedded and kernel development! See .NET Nano Framework [1] for embedded - works on microcontrollers like ESP32. For kernel development there's nothing really built in to support it but people have built tools [2] to do it.

[1] https://nanoframework.net/ [2] https://gocosmos.org/

[sterlind]

Pour one out for Midori, which would have replaced Windows with a capability-based OS completely written from kernel to shell in a C# dialect. Async/await, spans, and immutable support came from it, along with an (opt-in) Rust-like borrow checker. Satya canceled it, and all the work was lost to history. Singularity was the early public prototype.

[pjmlp]

The only thing Singularity and Midori share is the idea.

You should also pour one out for Longhorn, where internal politics tanked the idea, and eventually Windows team redid all those .NET based ideas into COM/C++, and were even proud of doing so (see Hilo sample documentation), hence why nowadays COM based libraries are the main way to expose modern Windows APIs (aka post Windows XP).

Had they collaborated instead, probably Windows would be closer to something like Android userspace nowadays.

Or for Ironclad, another one from Microsoft research, lesser known, also from the same research group, which even includes type safe Assembly,

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/safe-to...

Microsoft Research has plenty of work in such domains, they also had a LLVM like compiler framework, based on MSIL, called Phoenix, among other stuff, e.g. Dafny, FStar, Drawbridge, also come from OS projects.

Unfortunely classical Microsoft management has been more like it isn't Windows, it isn't shipping.

[vram22]

Partly off-topic: which well-known companies have research groups? I knew about Microsoft and IBM. Google, probably. Others? Might be interesting to browse their sites for nuggets to explore or use.

[indrora]

If you hear the name “lab126”, that’s Amazon’s team.

Nokia owns the shambling corpse that is Bell Labs. Looking beyond the English speaking world, I wouldn’t discount that the chaebols (LG, Samsung, Mitsubishi, etc) all have a few companies dedicated to research at the Bell Labs level.

[emmelaich]

https://research.redhat.com/