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This bums me out, too. Back in the day, you didn't have to treat all programs and data as hostile, because they weren't. Nowadays the GNU linker whines about
by username223 9y ago
This bums me out, too. Back in the day, you didn't have to treat all programs and data as hostile, because they weren't. Nowadays the GNU linker whines about calling gets(), but that wasn't a problem, because you knew that a 32-character stack-allocated buffer was big enough to answer a yes-or-no question.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoBecause the world was a nicer place back then, or because the computers were far less useful and thus mirrored the world far less?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThe latter. As long as it was bunch of nerds doing nerdy things, nobody cared. As soon as computers started processing things relevant to regular people, the regular people happened, and with them all the incentives for hostile behaviour.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoIndeed. I was being overly rhetorical :)
- microtherion 9y agoYes, but "Back in the day" ended with the Morris Worm at the latest, and that's coming up on its 30th anniversary today.
- username223 9y agoThat's fair -- the Morris Worm was an early demonstration that user-hostile software could easily make everyone's life worse. It still sucks that, as modern coders, most of our lives will be spent either producing or defending against hostile software.