DIP1028 - Rationale for accepting as is

[Paul Backus]

On Friday, 22 May 2020 at 13:58:14 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Friday, 22 May 2020 at 03:36:03 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:
>> This is the nightmare scenario that people are worried about: 
>> safety violations
>> being introduced *silently* into existing, correct D code.
>
> Honest question: What is the use case for an 
> absolutely-positively-has-to-be-safe program that calls C code? 
> Why would anyone ever do that? C is not and will never be a 
> safe language. "Someone looked at that blob of horrendous C 
> code and thinks it's safe" does not inspire confidence. Why not 
> rewrite the code in D (or Rust or Haskell or whatever) if 
> safety is that critical?

The problem isn't that safety is critical, it's that the D 
compiler is lying to me about the safety of my code.

If the compiler was honest and told me that my code was unsafe, 
I'd be able to make an informed decision to either (a) accept the 
lack of safety, or (b) do the additional work needed to make it 
safe. As-is, DIP 1028 takes that choice away from me, and I am 
forced to accept a lack of safety whether I want to or not. At 
that point, why not use C?