We haven’t really heard too much about Microsoft Midori, a project the company has been working on since 2008. Mary Jo Foley, a reliable Microsoft insider over at ZDNet, has learned that Microsoft’s Midori operating system project has indeed moved forward and has been written in a new language called M# (M Sharp).
According to Foley’s sources, Midori is Microsoft’s non-Windows based operating system project. This project has recently been moved to the Unified Operating Systems group, which is run by Executive VP Terry Myerson. Prior to this move, Midori was an incubation project. The team responsible for Midori has also been given the “green light” to go public with details about the project, including the language used to program Midori – as we are sure to hear more about this over the coming year.
M#, also known as M Sharp, is the language used to develop Midori, which was also built alongside the operating system. So what exactly is M#? This new language is pretty much an extension of the C# language. Dubbed as “C# for Systems Programming,” this language is also rumored to be open source when it is fully completed. M# may even be “re-implemented” on top of Microsoft’s Roslyn compiler-as-a-service technology, which has also yet to be completed.
The idea behind M# is that this programming language should be the lowest-level language used as it sits at the very bottom of the stack. However, M# can also be safely and productively used for writing higher-level systems such as web services.
According to Foley, Microsoft has yet to determine which portions of Midori will have a place in the company’s future operating system plans. There is also no word on how M# will evolve or if it will ever become open-sourced as rumored.
So when will we see Midori? Will we see a non-Windows operating system from Microsoft? Details are still a bit vague right now on Midori or M# and hopefully we will learn more during the 2014 year. You can also head over to the VIA link below to read Foley’s report on Midori.
