4 ms·

I think just finally getting rid of unsafe languages, particularly at the bottom. This will I think increase "productivity" of the world at large, by reducing t

I think just finally getting rid of unsafe languages, particularly at the bottom. This will I think increase "productivity" of the world at large, by reducing the number of crashes and security holes they have to contend with every day. I feel like we have finally arrived at the time when more people accept no-one (or at least, no-one outside a tiny set of people) should be using languages with undefined behaviour, or unsafe memory accesses by default (looking at you C and C++). If "we" want to be taken seriously, and as more of the world relies on computing, we can't be building on a foundation of sand and saying "Oh, as well as every programmer is clever enough, all the time, we'll probably be OK".

saagarjha 8y ago
I think C and C++ have too much buy-in from too many people to be replaced anytime soon.
- CJefferson 8y ago
  I agree, but I think things are moving. Increasingly few projects are started in C and C++, and people are making serious efforts to convert som existing projects to (for example) Rust. Also, looking at things like the Linux kernel, they are moving to add as many safety checks to C as is reasonable. Clang is adding a "all stack variables are initialised" mode.
maxxxxx 8y ago
But then the next generation of languages needs to make sure that you can actually do what you need to do. With C/C++ I am pretty sure that whatever problem I have can be solved. It may be ugly but you can go very deep down to the last bit. So a safe language should allow you to do that if needed.
- CJefferson 8y ago
  Rust is quite good for that. Also, you can always get a very clever person to write a very small piece of C code. Or perhaps, we just need our programs to be 20% slower? Would you buy a house which was 20% cheaper, but if a plumber was having a bad day there is a significant chance your house will explode if you turn all the taps on at once?
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    It's not only about speed. I was more thinking about programming close to hardware. There you need all the tricks.

saagarjha 8y ago

I think C and C++ have too much buy-in from too many people to be replaced anytime soon.

CJefferson 8y ago
I agree, but I think things are moving. Increasingly few projects are started in C and C++, and people are making serious efforts to convert som existing projects to (for example) Rust. Also, looking at things like the Linux kernel, they are moving to add as many safety checks to C as is reasonable. Clang is adding a "all stack variables are initialised" mode.

maxxxxx 8y ago

But then the next generation of languages needs to make sure that you can actually do what you need to do. With C/C++ I am pretty sure that whatever problem I have can be solved. It may be ugly but you can go very deep down to the last bit. So a safe language should allow you to do that if needed.

CJefferson 8y ago
Rust is quite good for that. Also, you can always get a very clever person to write a very small piece of C code. Or perhaps, we just need our programs to be 20% slower? Would you buy a house which was 20% cheaper, but if a plumber was having a bad day there is a significant chance your house will explode if you turn all the taps on at once?
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  It's not only about speed. I was more thinking about programming close to hardware. There you need all the tricks.