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It's nice, but it's about the tenth attempt to make C/C++ safe. I've been down that road myself. To succeed, this needs some major organization, something the s

It's nice, but it's about the tenth attempt to make C/C++ safe. I've been down that road myself. To succeed, this needs some major organization, something the size of Microsoft, Google, or the U.S. Government, pushing it hard. Someone has to fund retrofits of important trusted code, such as OpenSSL. When you're all done, it will be at least as crufty as C++.

gpderetta 2y ago
This is (or is going to be) a standard proposal I think, not just a dialect . Of course it still need buy in from the major compilers to have a chance to be accepted.
- favorited 2y ago
  There are competing "safe C++ syntax" projects being advocated by people on WG21 (as well as some members who seem to be opposed to any memory or concurrency safety tools beyond guidelines and linters). It's going to be up an uphill fight for any of them to gain traction, but at least some people are putting in the effort.
  - gpderetta 2y ago
    I think this one is the first one that actually got a document number assigned though, right? Although still a draft number and it is far from actually having wordings.
pjmlp 2y ago
On the other hand you will be able all the nice game engines, if this goes through. :) OpenSSL is C and I hardly believe they will ever adopt anything else.
- dwattttt 2y ago
  Honestly, with the kind of changes and restrictions that you would end up needing, you'll end up with enough of a different language that you can't cleanly migrate a big existing codebase. If a codebase wasn't designed with the intent of being able to prove validity & safety in the first place, trying to achieve it would be pretty rough. Not literally the same as trying to rewrite it in Rust, but the biggest problems would probably be comparable.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    It is still easier than a full rewrite. Adoption of C++, Objective-C over C, Typescript over JavaScript, versus alternatives that forced full rewrites, should be taken into account. It is no accident that one of Swift's long term roadmaps, is having for C++ the same kind of transparent interop they leverage from clang with Objective-C.

gpderetta 2y ago

This is (or is going to be) a standard proposal I think, not just a dialect . Of course it still need buy in from the major compilers to have a chance to be accepted.

favorited 2y ago
There are competing "safe C++ syntax" projects being advocated by people on WG21 (as well as some members who seem to be opposed to any memory or concurrency safety tools beyond guidelines and linters). It's going to be up an uphill fight for any of them to gain traction, but at least some people are putting in the effort.
- gpderetta 2y ago
  I think this one is the first one that actually got a document number assigned though, right? Although still a draft number and it is far from actually having wordings.

pjmlp 2y ago

On the other hand you will be able all the nice game engines, if this goes through. :) OpenSSL is C and I hardly believe they will ever adopt anything else.

dwattttt 2y ago
Honestly, with the kind of changes and restrictions that you would end up needing, you'll end up with enough of a different language that you can't cleanly migrate a big existing codebase. If a codebase wasn't designed with the intent of being able to prove validity & safety in the first place, trying to achieve it would be pretty rough. Not literally the same as trying to rewrite it in Rust, but the biggest problems would probably be comparable.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  It is still easier than a full rewrite. Adoption of C++, Objective-C over C, Typescript over JavaScript, versus alternatives that forced full rewrites, should be taken into account. It is no accident that one of Swift's long term roadmaps, is having for C++ the same kind of transparent interop they leverage from clang with Objective-C.