>> * Many people, early on, suggested moving to an FFI (namely Cantrill) and regrettably I ignored them.

A bit off-topic but Dahl referenced Cantrill here, who I figured to mean one of the authors of DTrace, Bryan Cantrill, who I then found from his Twitter (https://twitter.com/bcantrill) just last month started a new "computer company" which sounds super interesting, especially with his past experience and the passion he seems to have for attempting to solve a tough, bold problem:

http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/

Edit: which apparently was posted on HN with 500+ upvotes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21682360, regardless it's a good read worth re-mentioning here

Edit 2: Also thank you for the excellent write up, I wish every tech talk had a text TLDR