8 ms·

> the general trend of nudging, cajoling more and more coders into using managed, very high level, safe languages and runtimes This is a good thing: these lang

by jolux 5y ago

> the general trend of nudging, cajoling more and more coders into using managed, very high level, safe languages and runtimes This is a good thing: these languages and runtimes are indeed much safer, and also much more productive than C. You can even still get the same amount of low-level control with Rust. > in general discouraging peeking under the hood, at the hardware level, as something raw, wild or unsafe. C is unsafe though. Decades of experience writing software has shown us that even expert C programmers write memory bugs with regularity. > Yes you can still do it on a RPi Or any other PC really. > but perhaps in another decade or so, you might not be allowed to program in 'unsafe' languages on all other mainstream platforms, unless you register for a driver/system developer license or something, or not even that. Lunacy. What is the evidence for this? > The tinkerer/hacker ethos is disappearing slowly from PCs. It was only ever there in the first place with a tiny minority of users, and that minority seems as committed to their craft as they've ever been.

userbinator 5y ago
Lunacy. What is the evidence for this? Look at all the locked-down walled-garden platforms proliferating, and this famously prescient story: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html 20 years ago, many people thought RMS was a completely insane lunatic. Yet now he seems more like a prophet. It's not hard to see where things are going if you read between the lines. Increasingly, "safety and security" is being used to exert control over the population and destroy freedom. Letting your children play outside unsupervised is "unsafe". Non-self-driving cars are "unsafe". Eating certain food is "unsafe". Having a rooted mobile device is "unsafe". Not using an approved browser by a company that starts with G is "unsafe". ... Programming in C is "unsafe". "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > Look at all the locked-down walled-garden platforms proliferating I don’t think I’m getting the connection here —- Rust was incubated at Mozilla and is now managed by its own open-source foundation. There’s nothing particularly closed or “walled garden” about it. By contrast, Apple’s ecosystem is the canonical example of a walled garden. But it’s overwhelmingly programmed in unsafe languages (C, C++, and Objective-C). So what gives? > It's not hard to see where things are going if you read between the lines. Increasingly, "safety and security" is being used to exert control over the population and destroy freedom This is an eye-poppingly confusing confabulation: in what world am I any less free because the programs I write and use have fewer trivial vulnerabilities in them? What freedom, exactly, have I lost by choosing to crash less? You bring up the GNU project; their background is explicitly rooted in Lisp: one of the very first safe, managed languages. The unsafety and comparative messiness of C is one of their standard bugbears. That hasn’t stopped their message of political and software freedom, as you’ve pointed out.
  - loup-vaillant 5y ago
    With the possible exception of Rust, safety always had performance implications. Forcing people to write their program in C# or Swift or Java causes many programs to be slower than they really need to be, forcing us to either wait on them, or buy a faster palmtop. (Now most devs don't care about performance, so they don't see that as a problem. As a user however I can tell you, I hate when my phone lags for seemingly no good reason.)
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      > With the possible exception of Rust, safety always had performance implications. This is common piece of received wisdom, but I don't think it's held up well over the last decade: both Java and C# have extremely well-optimized runtimes that perform admirably after an initial startup period, and (I believe) Swift compiles to native code with many of the same optimization advantages that Rust has (e.g., simpler alias analysis). At the same time, C++ has seen a proliferation of patterns that are slightly safer, but perform miserably at scale: smart pointers (unnecessary lock contention), lambdas (code bloat, more I$ pressure), templates (I$), &c. C avoids most of these, but C written by "clever" programmers has similar pitfalls.
      - loup-vaillant 5y ago
        It should be tested, but I don't think that a JIT compiler can beat an ahead of time compiler when the memory isn't the bottleneck. Sure, if what you're competing against is some kind of pointer fest, forget about locks, just jumping around the memory will trash your cache, and it won't matter how optimised your local processing is. But if you follow some data oriented principles and take good care of your memory access patterns, I have a hard time imagining Java or C# beating C++ or Rust. Now there's this peculiar version/subset of C# that Mike Acton was promoting for Unity… though I'm not sure that counts.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Actually GNU project is one of the culprits for C spreading into a world of that was already moving into C++ and other safer languages. > When you want to use a language that gets compiled and runs at high speed, the best language to use is C. C++ is ok too, but please don’t make heavy use of templates. So is Java, if you compile it. https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Source-Language.html https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Source-Language... 20 years ago, it was more like > When you want to use a language that gets compiled and runs at high speed, the best language to use is C. Using another language is like using a non-standard feature: it will cause trouble for users. Even if GCC supports the other language, users may find it inconvenient to have to install the compiler for that other language in order to build your program. For example, if you write your program in C++, people will have to install the GNU C++ compiler in order to compile your program. > > C has one other advantage over C++ and other compiled languages: more people know C, so more people will find it easy to read and modify the program if it is written in C. http://gnu.ist.utl.pt/prep/standards/html_node/Source-Language.html#Source-Language http://gnu.ist.utl.pt/prep/standards/html_node/Source-Langua... Thank GNU for C.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  20 years ago many people earned a living selling commercial compilers, and the PC was the exception to vertical integration. Plenty of people knew what RMS was talking about. But GPL was very bad for business, said those there were against it, so the new world of shareware and public domain is here again.
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  > "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." That's only true to a point. Many mistakes are costly, and those costs are often born by other people. So it's reasonable to have protection against mistakes, for the benefit of both the person who would make them and the other people that they would affect. When it comes to computer security in particular, an easily compromised personal computer can be devastating to the livelihood of the person whose computer was compromised through no fault of their own (remember, most people don't know anything about computer security, and they shouldn't have to), and can also harm others, e.g. if the computer becomes part of a botnet. If that computer is part of an organization, then the mistake made by a programmer can affect the ability of that organization to provide important, even essential, services. This is what's driving the increased focus on safety in this context. I realize we're drowning in cynicism these days, and it's tempting to think that it's all an evil conspiracy to take away our freedom so a few people can make more money or have more power. Such a narrative resonates with something primal in us that's reinforced by the sort of simplistic good versus evil stories that make up so much of our entertainment. Reality is messier, more nuanced, and not as neatly connected as our puny pattern-seeking brains would prefer.
skohan 5y ago
> these languages and runtimes are indeed much safer, and also much more productive than C. You can even still get the same amount of low-level control with Rust. Rust is not a C analog. The whole value proposition of C is simplicity, and Rust is anything but simple. >> but perhaps in another decade or so, you might not be allowed to program in 'unsafe' languages on all other mainstream platforms, unless you register for a driver/system developer license or something, or not even that. > Lunacy. What is the evidence for this? Look at a platform like Apple. Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. >> The tinkerer/hacker ethos is disappearing slowly from PCs. >It was only ever there in the first place with a tiny minority of users, and that minority seems as committed to their craft as they've ever been. What do you mean? In early PC's, the way you ran software was to copy code from a magazine and compile and run it on your workstation. Being a PC user at all meant being a tinkerer/hacker a few decades ago.
- catblast01 5y ago
  > In early PC's, the way you ran software was to copy code from a magazine and compile and run it on your workstation. Being a PC user at all meant being a tinkerer/hacker a few decades ago. Bullshit. Except for the brief period of time when the Altair was the only thing going on in the Micro space… the Apple II, Atari 800, IBM PC and TRS-80 amongst others were marketed in the late 70s/early 80s with off the shelf, ready to run software. While copying code out of a magazine was something you could do, it wasn’t even the common case then. > Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. I have not experienced this. Yes Mac OS makes it harder to run random stuff downloaded from the internet, but Llvm, clang, cmake, python from the command line works the same as they always have (you are fetishizing code that is entered yourself after all).
  - skohan 5y ago
    The new windows does not even run on hardware which doesn't have TMP. You really don't see signs that computers are getting more closed?
    - pjmlp 5y ago
forgotmypw17 5y ago
>What is the evidence for this? There are entire CLASSES of computing devices which you cannot put arbitrary code on without severe obstacles...
- kaba0 5y ago
  How exactly is it relevant to the topic? What does it have to do with ditching C?
patrick451 5y ago
Safety above all is is the path towards slavery. This is true in both politics and software.
kitd 5y ago
This is a good thing: these languages and runtimes are indeed much safer, and also much more productive than C. You can even still get the same amount of low-level control with Rust. How do you bootstrap languages like Rust? Another 'safe' language? What about that one? Someone somewhere has to be working at the asm level.
- dthul 5y ago
  Bootstrapping and language safety are orthogonal. C is unsafe and still you can't bootstrap it if you don't already have a compiler which can compile your C compiler. According to that logic even assembly is not low level enough because you need an assembler to make a runnable program out of it.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Source code available, http://www.projectoberon.com/ http://www.projectoberon.com/

by jolux 5y ago

userbinator 5y ago

Lunacy. What is the evidence for this? Look at all the locked-down walled-garden platforms proliferating, and this famously prescient story: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html 20 years ago, many people thought RMS was a completely insane lunatic. Yet now he seems more like a prophet. It's not hard to see where things are going if you read between the lines. Increasingly, "safety and security" is being used to exert control over the population and destroy freedom. Letting your children play outside unsupervised is "unsafe". Non-self-driving cars are "unsafe". Eating certain food is "unsafe". Having a rooted mobile device is "unsafe". Not using an approved browser by a company that starts with G is "unsafe". ... Programming in C is "unsafe". "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

woodruffw 5y ago
> Look at all the locked-down walled-garden platforms proliferating I don’t think I’m getting the connection here —- Rust was incubated at Mozilla and is now managed by its own open-source foundation. There’s nothing particularly closed or “walled garden” about it. By contrast, Apple’s ecosystem is the canonical example of a walled garden. But it’s overwhelmingly programmed in unsafe languages (C, C++, and Objective-C). So what gives? > It's not hard to see where things are going if you read between the lines. Increasingly, "safety and security" is being used to exert control over the population and destroy freedom This is an eye-poppingly confusing confabulation: in what world am I any less free because the programs I write and use have fewer trivial vulnerabilities in them? What freedom, exactly, have I lost by choosing to crash less? You bring up the GNU project; their background is explicitly rooted in Lisp: one of the very first safe, managed languages. The unsafety and comparative messiness of C is one of their standard bugbears. That hasn’t stopped their message of political and software freedom, as you’ve pointed out.
- loup-vaillant 5y ago
  With the possible exception of Rust, safety always had performance implications. Forcing people to write their program in C# or Swift or Java causes many programs to be slower than they really need to be, forcing us to either wait on them, or buy a faster palmtop. (Now most devs don't care about performance, so they don't see that as a problem. As a user however I can tell you, I hate when my phone lags for seemingly no good reason.)
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    > With the possible exception of Rust, safety always had performance implications. This is common piece of received wisdom, but I don't think it's held up well over the last decade: both Java and C# have extremely well-optimized runtimes that perform admirably after an initial startup period, and (I believe) Swift compiles to native code with many of the same optimization advantages that Rust has (e.g., simpler alias analysis). At the same time, C++ has seen a proliferation of patterns that are slightly safer, but perform miserably at scale: smart pointers (unnecessary lock contention), lambdas (code bloat, more I$ pressure), templates (I$), &c. C avoids most of these, but C written by "clever" programmers has similar pitfalls.
    - loup-vaillant 5y ago
      It should be tested, but I don't think that a JIT compiler can beat an ahead of time compiler when the memory isn't the bottleneck. Sure, if what you're competing against is some kind of pointer fest, forget about locks, just jumping around the memory will trash your cache, and it won't matter how optimised your local processing is. But if you follow some data oriented principles and take good care of your memory access patterns, I have a hard time imagining Java or C# beating C++ or Rust. Now there's this peculiar version/subset of C# that Mike Acton was promoting for Unity… though I'm not sure that counts.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Actually GNU project is one of the culprits for C spreading into a world of that was already moving into C++ and other safer languages. > When you want to use a language that gets compiled and runs at high speed, the best language to use is C. C++ is ok too, but please don’t make heavy use of templates. So is Java, if you compile it. https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Source-Language.html https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Source-Language... 20 years ago, it was more like > When you want to use a language that gets compiled and runs at high speed, the best language to use is C. Using another language is like using a non-standard feature: it will cause trouble for users. Even if GCC supports the other language, users may find it inconvenient to have to install the compiler for that other language in order to build your program. For example, if you write your program in C++, people will have to install the GNU C++ compiler in order to compile your program. > > C has one other advantage over C++ and other compiled languages: more people know C, so more people will find it easy to read and modify the program if it is written in C. http://gnu.ist.utl.pt/prep/standards/html_node/Source-Language.html#Source-Language http://gnu.ist.utl.pt/prep/standards/html_node/Source-Langua... Thank GNU for C.
pjmlp 5y ago
20 years ago many people earned a living selling commercial compilers, and the PC was the exception to vertical integration. Plenty of people knew what RMS was talking about. But GPL was very bad for business, said those there were against it, so the new world of shareware and public domain is here again.
mwcampbell 5y ago
> "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." That's only true to a point. Many mistakes are costly, and those costs are often born by other people. So it's reasonable to have protection against mistakes, for the benefit of both the person who would make them and the other people that they would affect. When it comes to computer security in particular, an easily compromised personal computer can be devastating to the livelihood of the person whose computer was compromised through no fault of their own (remember, most people don't know anything about computer security, and they shouldn't have to), and can also harm others, e.g. if the computer becomes part of a botnet. If that computer is part of an organization, then the mistake made by a programmer can affect the ability of that organization to provide important, even essential, services. This is what's driving the increased focus on safety in this context. I realize we're drowning in cynicism these days, and it's tempting to think that it's all an evil conspiracy to take away our freedom so a few people can make more money or have more power. Such a narrative resonates with something primal in us that's reinforced by the sort of simplistic good versus evil stories that make up so much of our entertainment. Reality is messier, more nuanced, and not as neatly connected as our puny pattern-seeking brains would prefer.

skohan 5y ago

> these languages and runtimes are indeed much safer, and also much more productive than C. You can even still get the same amount of low-level control with Rust. Rust is not a C analog. The whole value proposition of C is simplicity, and Rust is anything but simple. >> but perhaps in another decade or so, you might not be allowed to program in 'unsafe' languages on all other mainstream platforms, unless you register for a driver/system developer license or something, or not even that. > Lunacy. What is the evidence for this? Look at a platform like Apple. Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. >> The tinkerer/hacker ethos is disappearing slowly from PCs. >It was only ever there in the first place with a tiny minority of users, and that minority seems as committed to their craft as they've ever been. What do you mean? In early PC's, the way you ran software was to copy code from a magazine and compile and run it on your workstation. Being a PC user at all meant being a tinkerer/hacker a few decades ago.

catblast01 5y ago
> In early PC's, the way you ran software was to copy code from a magazine and compile and run it on your workstation. Being a PC user at all meant being a tinkerer/hacker a few decades ago. Bullshit. Except for the brief period of time when the Altair was the only thing going on in the Micro space… the Apple II, Atari 800, IBM PC and TRS-80 amongst others were marketed in the late 70s/early 80s with off the shelf, ready to run software. While copying code out of a magazine was something you could do, it wasn’t even the common case then. > Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. I have not experienced this. Yes Mac OS makes it harder to run random stuff downloaded from the internet, but Llvm, clang, cmake, python from the command line works the same as they always have (you are fetishizing code that is entered yourself after all).
- skohan 5y ago
  The new windows does not even run on hardware which doesn't have TMP. You really don't see signs that computers are getting more closed?
  - pjmlp 5y ago

forgotmypw17 5y ago

>What is the evidence for this? There are entire CLASSES of computing devices which you cannot put arbitrary code on without severe obstacles...

kaba0 5y ago
How exactly is it relevant to the topic? What does it have to do with ditching C?

patrick451 5y ago

Safety above all is is the path towards slavery. This is true in both politics and software.

kitd 5y ago

This is a good thing: these languages and runtimes are indeed much safer, and also much more productive than C. You can even still get the same amount of low-level control with Rust. How do you bootstrap languages like Rust? Another 'safe' language? What about that one? Someone somewhere has to be working at the asm level.

dthul 5y ago
Bootstrapping and language safety are orthogonal. C is unsafe and still you can't bootstrap it if you don't already have a compiler which can compile your C compiler. According to that logic even assembly is not low level enough because you need an assembler to make a runnable program out of it.
pjmlp 5y ago
Source code available, http://www.projectoberon.com/ http://www.projectoberon.com/