How long does it take your servers to finish POST? Shaving CPU cycles on boot is not something I ever worry about, because just getting to the boot loader takes minutes.
Also, shell scripts rock for an init system language. It's a language that almost everyone knows and can debug without being a CS major. The only reason you 'have no idea what happened' is because the scripts are written poorly, and code in any language would be hard to debug if it's written poorly.
Fork and exec, seriously? You're worried about functions that take microseconds to finish? Look again - the huge sleep cycles to wait for drivers to finish initializing takes up a lot more time.
I have written my own init systems three times in three languages, and examined countless distros' versions. Trust me, shell is the best compromise.
Also, shell scripts rock for an init system language. It's a language that almost everyone knows and can debug without being a CS major. The only reason you 'have no idea what happened' is because the scripts are written poorly, and code in any language would be hard to debug if it's written poorly.
Fork and exec, seriously? You're worried about functions that take microseconds to finish? Look again - the huge sleep cycles to wait for drivers to finish initializing takes up a lot more time.
I have written my own init systems three times in three languages, and examined countless distros' versions. Trust me, shell is the best compromise.