4 ms·
Okay, I appreciate that Ritchie was a genius and that C was revolutionary and is foundational to modern computing. But seriously, C arrays not having bounds ch
by jdpage 13y ago
Okay, I appreciate that Ritchie was a genius and that C was revolutionary and is foundational to modern computing.
But seriously, C arrays not having bounds checks has probably caused more security disasters than anything else in the history of computing, with the possible exception of end-users. Was there a good reason for this, and if so, what was it?
- georgemcbay 13y agoC was introduced in 1972, that's a year before I was born (and it had been in development for a couple years prior). The first computer I programmed on ran at 1 mhz and had 64 kilobytes of RAM. Is it really so hard to see why C didn't historically have bounds checking? Bounds checking was pretty controversial in languages even as late as the early 2000s because of the runtime cost.
- emiliobumachar 13y agoI'm going to guess performance. Sure it's tiny today, but what about back then?
- dman 13y agoC is to sytems computing what democracy is to governance.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- doctorstupid 13y agoC was to be used by people who knew what they were doing. Unwittingly, it opened the door for people who didn't.