Are there similarities between operating system kernels and programming language kernels?

Posted by rahmu on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by rahmu
Published on 2012-08-31T11:45:52Z Indexed on 2012/08/31 15:52 UTC
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operating-systems

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smalltalk

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kernel

I know very little about Smalltalk but I noticed that there's a frequent mention of the "kernel". Dan Ingalls prime maintainer of several implementations of Smalltalk also worked on a Javascript environment called "Lively Kernel" and in Peter Siebel's book he kept mentionning the "kernel".

I cannot help but think that it is no coincidence that the creators of Smalltalk used the name of a (central) part of operating systems to refer to a particular component of their language.

Was it because Smalltalk intended to act as an operating system? Was it because theory behind programming languages and operating systems have a lot in common?

What is the reason behind the common appelation of the two components?

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