On the future of DIP1000

[Bill Hicks via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On Saturday, 27 August 2016 at 20:47:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 8/27/2016 8:19 AM, Bill Hicks wrote:
>
> I believe Andrei's point was that Rust had focused on one 
> problem to the relative exclusion of others, not that memory 
> safety was unimportant. Rust, to its credit, has changed the 
> perception of the importance of memory safety.
>

I think it's disingenuous to say that Rust has focused only on 
one problem.  As it is, Rust is a much more capable system 
programming language than D.  Besides, Andrei is not a C++ expert 
(I know most think this is the case because he's famous, but he 
isn't), and he's certainly not a PL expert.  Not even close.  So 
I don't think he has the right to criticize other programming 
languages, specially in such a condescending manner.

>> The problem with misuse of
>> features like macros is lack of proper training and education, 
>> not so much the
>> features themselves.
>
> This argument is often put forward as the solution, but it just 
> does not scale. This is why so, so much code has security bugs 
> in it. Heck, the whole reason people move from C to Rust is 
> because education and training have proved inadequate to get 
> safe code written in C, despite decades of trying.
>

Sure, some language features cause more problems than not, 
regardless of how much training one receives, but I don't think 
hygienic macros is one of them.


BTW, most of that "code with security bugs in it" has been 
written by white men.  Had it been written by non-whites, and god 
forbid women, then the programmers would have been blamed for the 
defects.  But because it's been written by white men, they are 
choosing to blame the tools and the languages, and not the 
programmers.