Your microkernel. I expect the intended point of comparison was “principled and pure”, not “unsuitable for general use”.

WDYM? 'pragmatic' here means 'not necessarily purely microkernel-y if very difficult'. for instance, the memory manager is in the kernel in managarm

But this "not necessarily purely microkernel-y if very difficult" interpretation essentially means that Windows NT is pragmatic.

Because this is pretty much exactly how NT came to be the mess it now is.

I wonder if the parent commenter's point is that really, almost any OS design can be called "pragmatic", and therefore stressing it is particularly prideful.

NT is no microkernel, nor has it ever been. It has always been monolithic.

You are perhaps missing the point of what I am saying.

But anyway: around the introduction of NT [0] there was clear discussion about how the kernel design was informed by the Mach/kernel boundary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT

"Like VMS,[24] Windows NT's kernel mode code distinguishes between the "kernel", whose primary purpose is to implement processor- and architecture-dependent functions, and the "executive". This was designed as a modified microkernel, as the Windows NT kernel was influenced by the Mach microkernel developed by Richard Rashid at Carnegie Mellon University,[26] but does not meet all of the criteria of a pure microkernel."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT#Hyb...

[...] the strict distinction between Executive and Kernel is the most prominent remnant of the original microkernel design, and historical design documentation consistently refers to the kernel component as "the microkernel".

[0] which I am old enough to remember as an adult and a graduate -- I remember particular criticism from academics in OS design around the time of NT 4.0, which as I (admittedly hazily) recall relaxed some of the distinctive design because 3.5's graphics performance was too poor and the graphics subsystem had to be moved essentially into the kernel.

Please elaborate

Doesn’t pragmatic just mean that you’ve knowingly made some tradeoffs that go against the ideal?

Admitting that doesn’t read like hubris to me

I don't think it's hubristic to describe what philosophy it hews to. The opposite of "pragmatic" here would be "without compromise"/"principled". They know they are willing to make compromises in the name of expediency, so calling it pragmatic is just a declaration of intent, not a boast in front of the Olympian gods.