I agree. Silent issues are the problem that needs addressing. Personally I think bugs should be addressed, with better debug modes and tools. Take this example

I agree. Silent issues are the problem that needs addressing. Personally I think bugs should be addressed, with better debug modes and tools. Take this example: int i, array[10]; for(i = 0; i < 11; i++) array[i] = 0; A clear bug, right? You could write this type of bug in any language. Many languages would stop you from writing outside the array. In C its undefined behavior. Undefined behavior means that the compiler doesn't have to do anything, therefor it doesn't have to at run time test if the code is correct. It can assume that the programmer knows what they are doing. Thats why C has great performance, but also why bugs can be silent and hard to find. But, It doesn't meant that the compiler has to ignore the issue. Its undefined behavior, so the compiler is free to do all the checks that a language that doesn't let you write outside an array do. Sure, then C will become just as slow as other languages, but you can now find and remove the silent bug. This is why I think that debug mode, should be very different from release mode. The two compilers have entirely different design goals. Some compilers are starting to do this. Visual studio will for instance break if you access a lot of uninitialized values in debug mode, something that it will ignore in release mode. There are loads of things that could be done to improve debugging that doesn't require the language to change or to slow down the release runtime.