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I’m not sure how you can even try to juxtapose technical issues like memory safety with sociopolitical problems like corpo interests being in conflict with the

I’m not sure how you can even try to juxtapose technical issues like memory safety with sociopolitical problems like corpo interests being in conflict with the interests of the common people. The formeer can be alleviated with technical solutions. There’s nothing that a programming language can do about the latter. Also, I question your claim that memory unsafety is not of great importance to regular computer users. Perhaps not if your computer is airgapped from the internet and never gets any unvetted software installed. Otherwise, have you missed the primary cause of the majority of CVEs issued in the past decades? Do you not think that the main technical problem behind countless security vulnerabilities, that have very concretely affected tens and hundreds of millions of people, does not deserve the attention that it’s finally starting to get? Google has reported that the mere act of stopping writing new code in memory-unsafe languages has made the fraction of mem safety vulnerabilities drop from >80% to ~20% in a few years. This is because bugs have a half-life, and once you stop introducing new bugs, the total count starts going down asymptotically as existing bugs get fixed. Finally, since you inevitably mentioned Rust, memory safety is indeed a necessary but not sufficient condition in software reliability. Luckily, Rust also happens to greatly decrease the odds of logic bugs getting in, thanks to its modern (i.e. features first introduced in ML in the 70s) type system that actually tries to help you get things right. C is never going to have those parts, the “if it compiles, it is correct by construction” assurance. C++ has janky, half-assed, non-orthogonal, poorly-composing, inconsistently designed versions of a lot of the stuff, but it also has all of the cruft, and that cruft is still what is taught to people before the less-bad parts. And because C++ is larger than the most people’s brain capacity, most people can’t even get to the more less-bad parts, never mind keeping up with new standard versions.

uecker 2y ago
Technology and society are never separate things. The question if why something is seen as important or not, and what is funded, very much depends on societal questions. I am using Linux for almost 30 years. I have never been hacked, or know anybody personally, who was hacked because of a memory safety issue in any open-source component. I know such people and companies exist, I just know many more which are affected by other issues. I know many people affected by bugs in Microsoft software, including myself. I am also affected by websites spying on me, from email not being encrypted by default, etc. A lot of things could be done do make my safety and security better. That you cite Google actually demonstrates the problem: Memory safety is much more their concern, not mine. And C definitely will have memory safety. Stay tuned. (And I also like to have memory safety.) I do not care about C++ nor do I care about Rust. Both languages are far too complex for my taste.
bluGill 2y ago
> Otherwise, have you missed the primary cause of the majority of CVEs issued in the past decades Only because CVEs are never issued when humans are compromised. While that is probably the correct action on their part it means your argument is flawed as you don't account for human vulnerabilities which are much more common. Yes memory safety is a big problem and we should do something - but as an industry we need to not ignore the largest problem. There is a lot we can do in UX to prevent most security vulnerabilities, and putting too much emphasis on memory can take away from potentially more productive paths.

uecker 2y ago

Technology and society are never separate things. The question if why something is seen as important or not, and what is funded, very much depends on societal questions. I am using Linux for almost 30 years. I have never been hacked, or know anybody personally, who was hacked because of a memory safety issue in any open-source component. I know such people and companies exist, I just know many more which are affected by other issues. I know many people affected by bugs in Microsoft software, including myself. I am also affected by websites spying on me, from email not being encrypted by default, etc. A lot of things could be done do make my safety and security better. That you cite Google actually demonstrates the problem: Memory safety is much more their concern, not mine. And C definitely will have memory safety. Stay tuned. (And I also like to have memory safety.) I do not care about C++ nor do I care about Rust. Both languages are far too complex for my taste.

bluGill 2y ago

> Otherwise, have you missed the primary cause of the majority of CVEs issued in the past decades Only because CVEs are never issued when humans are compromised. While that is probably the correct action on their part it means your argument is flawed as you don't account for human vulnerabilities which are much more common. Yes memory safety is a big problem and we should do something - but as an industry we need to not ignore the largest problem. There is a lot we can do in UX to prevent most security vulnerabilities, and putting too much emphasis on memory can take away from potentially more productive paths.