“STEPS Toward Expressive Programming Systems: “A Science Experiment””, 2012 (; similar):
[Technical report from a research project aiming at writing a GUI OS in 20k LoC; tricks include ASCII art networking DSLs & generic optimization for text layout, which lets them implement a full OS, sound, GUI desktops, Internet networking & web browsers, a text/document editor etc, all in less lines of code that most OSes need for small parts of any of those.]
…Many software systems today are made from millions to hundreds of millions of lines of program code that is too large, complex and fragile to be improved, fixed, or integrated. (One hundred million lines of code at 50 lines per page is 5000 books of 400 pages each! This is beyond human scale.) What if this could be made literally 1000× smaller—or more? And made more powerful, clear, simple and robust? ‘
…STEPS Aims At ‘Personal Computing’—STEPS takes as its prime focus the dynamic modeling of ‘personal computing’ as most people think of it…word processor, spreadsheet, Internet browser, other productivity SW; User Interface and Command Listeners: windows, menus, alerts, scroll bars and other controls, etc.; Graphics and Sound Engine: physical display, sprites, fonts, compositing, rendering, sampling, playing; Systems Services: development system, database query languages, etc.; Systems Utilities: file copy, desk accessories, control panels, etc.; Logical Level of OS: eg. file management, Internet, and networking facilities, etc.; Hardware Level of OS: eg. memory manager, process manager, device drivers, etc.