7 ms·
Eh, only recently did we really have, in the consumer space, the computational and memory margin to seriously consider spending on more memory-safe languages. C
by AceJohnny2 5y ago
Eh, only recently did we really have, in the consumer space, the computational and memory margin to seriously consider spending on more memory-safe languages. Certainly in the 80s through 00s, switching to a language that gave you nebulous "safety" improvements wasn't worth losing even 10% performance. The competition would eat you up over it.
(There were absolutely spaces where robustness and safety were the priority, but those weren't consumer, and their cost reflected it.)
Even today, I'm not sure we have the engineering margin spend on such efforts (time-to-market is still the priority), though I think the pressure is slowly increasing to do it (again, in consumer spaces, which macOS definitely is).
- pjmlp 5y agoHence why we need liability, everyone pays the same for faulty software. No one would enjoy paying for a fridge that leaks water, why should they do the same for software. Bad programming shops taught them that way, that is why.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago>Bad programming shops taught them that way, that is why. Most of these programming languages when they were created did not have online connectivity or hackers as a threat. It would be ridiculous to expect them to protect against a threat that didn't exist like calling Japanese idiots for not making nuclear defenses and their bad teachers are the reason. In embedded hardware I still don't see the benefit for memory safety.
- pjmlp 5y agoSecurity and safety in programming languages is a know issue since the 1950's, as anyone that actually cares about this subject is aware. In fact it was one of the sales pitch for Burroughs (1961), still being sold by Unisys, which not surprisingly keeps using its safety over classical POSIX as sales pitch.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoThey made banking computers, seems relevant there, and also typewriters from what I briefly looked at. Were the typewriters memory safe too? If they were not, what was the benefit, and if they weren't do you see my point? By the forces of the market, POSIX won because it had more useful features. Personal computers where you were expected to load software yourself and were not connected to any threats? I do not see any reason for me to care about that even today, and its not because programmers had bad habits, they made reasonable tradeoffs, making worst performing software for nonexistent threats of that time is not teaching them bad programming, over engineering for nonexistent threats is bad programming. In non networked devices, I still see no benefit.
- pjmlp 5y agoPOSIX won thanks to free beer, had AT&T been allowed to sell it from day one, history would have been quite differently. It is like 1 euro shops, quality is not what customers are looking for.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoNo, it won because it was better. You ignore every question I ask about how memory safety is useful or relevant for those uses.
- pjmlp 5y agoBecause UNIX won the same way people flock to 1 euro shops, quality has nothing to do with it, free beer is what counts. Had UNIX been sold like every other OS from the same decade, and it would have been a footnote on the history of OS. When one is thirsty any liquid goes down regardless of the taste.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoGood idea, lets ban Linux and all the free software, and make all free ones paid.
- tempodox 5y ago> In embedded hardware I still don't see the benefit for memory safety. If anything, safety considerations in embedded devices are even more important than elsewhere, if only for the fact that those devices typically don't get patched. It has to work right the first time. F*cking this up can have dire consequences, depending on what the device is doing.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoThats possible, but I don't see that in practice, I could die any second, but my fan controller, my heating pad, and my camera lens are not being hacked or broken frome memory issues.
- eru 5y ago> No one would enjoy paying for a fridge that leaks water, why should they do the same for software. There's no law against licensing bad fridges with the explicit warning that they might leak, is there? Many people choose to go with fridges that are higher quality than the absolute minimum. Some people also choose to pay for extended warranties. Many other people choose less reliable options, because they have other preferences. This choice on offer is a good thing. Why do you want to ban this choice? Would open-source be effectively outlawed in your favourite world?
- pjmlp 5y agoYes there is, when the health of others are at risk, sanitary inspection will close down the shop. Whatever one does to themselves on their own place is their own thing, if they happen to land at the hospital due to food poisoning caused by bad refrigeration. In any case, the fridge was only one example among thousands.
- eru 5y ago> No one would enjoy paying for a fridge that leaks water, why should they do the same for software. See, you are suggesting here that customers don't want bad fridge, so they don't buy bad fridges. The problem solves itself. Why not give customers of software the same responsibility and maturity?
- geodel 5y agoYeah, not gonna happen when people paid ZERO dollars for OS. > No one would enjoy paying for a fridge that leaks water,.. For fridge people pay serious money. For software people dig deep in their pocket and then come back with "Fuck it , I am gonna use open source stuff"
- grey_earthling 5y agoI started using open source stuff precisely because I could expect updates and maintenance not to be constrained by commercial shenanigans.
- _0w8t 5y agoThis is simply not true. For example Ada was much more memory safe than C/C++ and existed from eighties.
- danaris 5y agoAda was not made for the consumer space: it was made for situations where being provably solid was more important than any other consideration.
- pjmlp 5y agoObject Pascal then, created by Apple for Mac OS and Lisa.
- _0w8t 5y agoNothing in Ada made it impossible to use it on PC or similar devices. And performance of its compiled code was similar to that of C code if not better. And some of its features like ability to return from a function a dynamically-sized stack-allocated array is still not available in C/C++ or Rust for that matter. I guess what really made it a niche language was the cost of compilers. DoD vendors in eighties already learned how to milk their customer.
- danaris 5y agoSure. But that's not what the original poster was arguing.