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There will always be software bugs. What I'm trying to say is that people should be made liable for avoidable bugs due to incompetence or ill-placed personal pr

by pka 10y ago

There will always be software bugs. What I'm trying to say is that people should be made liable for avoidable bugs due to incompetence or ill-placed personal preferences ("Real programmers write in C!11"). There are times when C is unavoidable, unfortunately, but when somebody chooses a technology regardless of better, safer alternatives, "just because", they should be made liable, absolutely.

jacquesm 10y ago
It's a matter of economics already. There are safer, better alternatives for almost everything we do. But economy dictates that we end up with a compromise. Rust would be just another compromise, slightly different stage, no huge difference and potentially a huge cost. Silver bullets in software development do not exist, rust is no exception to this and the irrational hyping of rust as being a silver bullet actually has the opposite effect. If rust is that much better at all aspects of software development (and not just in preventing one class of bugs) then it will find mainstream adoption. But you don't get that effect by ramming it down other people's throats, you get that effect by showing it in practice. And this is where rust - at least so far - is underwhelming. Also, and this is another point of irritation with me, the rust community makes it seem as if theirs is the only language that will avoid this kind of bug, which is far from true, there are other platforms / languages with far wider adoption that have these traits as well.
- staticassertion 10y ago
  > There are safer, better alternatives for almost everything we do. But economy dictates that we end up with a compromise. Rust would be just another compromise, slightly different stage, no huge difference and potentially a huge cost. I think the argument is that the economics need to change. People need to stop being irresponsible - we need liability when someone is negligent, just like in any other engineering discipline. > Silver bullets in software development do not exist, rust is no exception to this and the irrational hyping of rust as being a silver bullet actually has the opposite effect. I keep seeing this, and yet I have not once seen anyone call it a silver bullet. > Also, and this is another point of irritation with me, the rust community makes it seem as if theirs is the only language that will avoid this kind of bug, which is far from true, there are other platforms / languages with far wider adoption that have these traits as well. Show me another language with no garbage collection, memory safety, C/C++ level performance that has been anything other than academic.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > I think the argument is that the economics need to change. People need to stop being irresponsible - we need liability when someone is negligent, just like in any other engineering discipline. I totally agree with that and have been a long time proponent of liability for damage caused by software bugs. But that would have to be all bugs, not just some classes of bugs. > Show me another language with no garbage collection, memory safety, C/C++ level performance that has been anything other than academic. D. And by the way, rust is only 'memory safe' as long as you don't disable the safety mechanisms, so I think 'memory safe by default' would be a better way to describe it.
    - staticassertion 10y ago
      > I totally agree with that and have been a long time proponent of liability for damage caused by software bugs. But that would have to be all bugs, not just some classes of bugs. Why? That goes against everything we've done to categorize bugs - we do not treat all bugs the same, and we would not consider all bugs to be due to negligence. > D. Only with a garbage collector or a 'safe' annotation. Rust has the opposite - a safe language by default. > And by the way, rust is only 'memory safe' as long as you don't disable the safety mechanisms, so I think 'memory safe by default' would be a better way to describe it. That's fine, memory safe by default is an acceptable way to refer to it. It's worth noting that I have written thousands of lines of rust code and never published code with a single line of unsafe. None of my projects have required it. So 'by default' is pretty powerful, since I've never ever needed to opt out.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        > Why? That goes against everything we've done to categorize bugs - we do not treat all bugs the same, and we would not consider all bugs to be due to negligence. That would be something you could only know by evaluating this on a bug-by-bug basis, the important thing to realize is that to an end user it simply does not matter what class of bug caused their data-loss, loss of privacy or loss of assets.
- pka 10y ago
  I'm not promoting Rust, nor have I actually written anything in it. I do think though it's a step in the right direction. > But you don't get that effect by ramming it down other people's throats, you get that effect by showing it in practice. I disagree. I've seen many C programmers who think that C is the be all end all of programming languages. Those people will not be convinced by showing them another technology that is better in practice. The fact that it's actually unbelievably hard to write correct software in C is somehow a point of pride for many people, though I speculate that few of them can actually follow through. Of course there will always be logic bugs in software, even with formal systems and whatnot (i.e. bugs in the specifications). But memory bugs and the resulting security exploits could in many cases be a thing of the past already. Many industries have similar regulations, i.e. seatbelts in cars. If somebody dies because of a faulty or non-existing seatbelt, there will be consequences. If somebody dies because they were talking on the phone and the car didn't prevent it, well, you can't control everything. Is this a buffer overflow? Why was this written in C? No good answer - pay up.

by pka 10y ago

jacquesm 10y ago

It's a matter of economics already. There are safer, better alternatives for almost everything we do. But economy dictates that we end up with a compromise. Rust would be just another compromise, slightly different stage, no huge difference and potentially a huge cost. Silver bullets in software development do not exist, rust is no exception to this and the irrational hyping of rust as being a silver bullet actually has the opposite effect. If rust is that much better at all aspects of software development (and not just in preventing one class of bugs) then it will find mainstream adoption. But you don't get that effect by ramming it down other people's throats, you get that effect by showing it in practice. And this is where rust - at least so far - is underwhelming. Also, and this is another point of irritation with me, the rust community makes it seem as if theirs is the only language that will avoid this kind of bug, which is far from true, there are other platforms / languages with far wider adoption that have these traits as well.

staticassertion 10y ago
> There are safer, better alternatives for almost everything we do. But economy dictates that we end up with a compromise. Rust would be just another compromise, slightly different stage, no huge difference and potentially a huge cost. I think the argument is that the economics need to change. People need to stop being irresponsible - we need liability when someone is negligent, just like in any other engineering discipline. > Silver bullets in software development do not exist, rust is no exception to this and the irrational hyping of rust as being a silver bullet actually has the opposite effect. I keep seeing this, and yet I have not once seen anyone call it a silver bullet. > Also, and this is another point of irritation with me, the rust community makes it seem as if theirs is the only language that will avoid this kind of bug, which is far from true, there are other platforms / languages with far wider adoption that have these traits as well. Show me another language with no garbage collection, memory safety, C/C++ level performance that has been anything other than academic.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > I think the argument is that the economics need to change. People need to stop being irresponsible - we need liability when someone is negligent, just like in any other engineering discipline. I totally agree with that and have been a long time proponent of liability for damage caused by software bugs. But that would have to be all bugs, not just some classes of bugs. > Show me another language with no garbage collection, memory safety, C/C++ level performance that has been anything other than academic. D. And by the way, rust is only 'memory safe' as long as you don't disable the safety mechanisms, so I think 'memory safe by default' would be a better way to describe it.
  - staticassertion 10y ago
    > I totally agree with that and have been a long time proponent of liability for damage caused by software bugs. But that would have to be all bugs, not just some classes of bugs. Why? That goes against everything we've done to categorize bugs - we do not treat all bugs the same, and we would not consider all bugs to be due to negligence. > D. Only with a garbage collector or a 'safe' annotation. Rust has the opposite - a safe language by default. > And by the way, rust is only 'memory safe' as long as you don't disable the safety mechanisms, so I think 'memory safe by default' would be a better way to describe it. That's fine, memory safe by default is an acceptable way to refer to it. It's worth noting that I have written thousands of lines of rust code and never published code with a single line of unsafe. None of my projects have required it. So 'by default' is pretty powerful, since I've never ever needed to opt out.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      > Why? That goes against everything we've done to categorize bugs - we do not treat all bugs the same, and we would not consider all bugs to be due to negligence. That would be something you could only know by evaluating this on a bug-by-bug basis, the important thing to realize is that to an end user it simply does not matter what class of bug caused their data-loss, loss of privacy or loss of assets.
pka 10y ago
I'm not promoting Rust, nor have I actually written anything in it. I do think though it's a step in the right direction. > But you don't get that effect by ramming it down other people's throats, you get that effect by showing it in practice. I disagree. I've seen many C programmers who think that C is the be all end all of programming languages. Those people will not be convinced by showing them another technology that is better in practice. The fact that it's actually unbelievably hard to write correct software in C is somehow a point of pride for many people, though I speculate that few of them can actually follow through. Of course there will always be logic bugs in software, even with formal systems and whatnot (i.e. bugs in the specifications). But memory bugs and the resulting security exploits could in many cases be a thing of the past already. Many industries have similar regulations, i.e. seatbelts in cars. If somebody dies because of a faulty or non-existing seatbelt, there will be consequences. If somebody dies because they were talking on the phone and the car didn't prevent it, well, you can't control everything. Is this a buffer overflow? Why was this written in C? No good answer - pay up.