What is the author's model then? I agree everything-can-randomly-change-anything interpretation is uncharitable, but then I am confused what the model is. (As y

What is the author's model then? I agree everything-can-randomly-change-anything interpretation is uncharitable, but then I am confused what the model is. (As you pointed out, that's the literal interpretation.) I think there is no model, and the author is just vaguely complaining they are not satisfied with status quo. But then the tone is unbelievably arrogant and deserves all the derision. By the way, I am of the opinion C's pointer model can be greatly improved to be programmer friendly, beyond getting rid of strict aliasing rule. For example, I think comparing two unrelated pointers (for sorting, lock ordering, etc.) should be well defined and not UB. But claiming "pointers are easy" is not the way to go.