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Google has this thing called “Testing on the Toilet” where they post factoids about Google’s codebase and best practices. I read one and it said FORTRAN is a hi
by yingw787 7y ago
Google has this thing called “Testing on the Toilet” where they post factoids about Google’s codebase and best practices. I read one and it said FORTRAN is a highly secure language (or there haven’t been any security vulnerabilities found in the language in a while).
Devil’s advocate for not writing FORTRAN off completely at first sight.
- xz0r 7y agoWhy do they even do it in the first place?
- Stratoscope 7y agoAre you asking why Google has Testing on the Toilet? Captive audience.
- tyrust 7y agoNote that Fortran on the Flusher last year's April 1st edition of Testing on the Toilet.
- umvi 7y agoOr is it just because no one uses it? Apple used to run ad campaigns about how Macs were immune to viruses and therefore highly secure. Turns out enough people just weren't using Mac, and viruses started popping up once it went mainstream.
- skybrian 7y agoHave there been Mac viruses that actually spread user-to-user in the wild? The articles I've seen talk about malware, which is different. Also the occasional proof-of-concept.
- wbl 7y agoElk Cloner
- yingw787 7y agoVery much could be! Then again, I doubt Google would want to intentionally spin technical content for its own engineers, that might have implications for its own codebase, culture, and other deliverables.
- greglindahl 7y agoThere are entire scientific fields where Fortran is extremely popular. But mostly not ones that involve easy insecurities.
- brlewis 7y agoApple once advertised "Macs don't get PC viruses", which was true, but misleading. Microsoft often claimed that the reason there weren't Mac viruses was that it wasn't as attractive a target. They kept this trope going for a very long time. They said it for so long, that one would think hackers would want to crack MacOS just as a way to stand out from the crowd. The higher prevalence of PCs was never enough to explain the orders of magnitude difference in exploits. Macs may not have been super secure, but they were way more secure than Windows, and the number of viruses for Macs never "popped" in any way comparable.