Andrei's list of barriers to D adoption

[Observer via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 7 June 2016 at 23:05:49 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/7/2016 2:28 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> I can attest that figuring out why something isn't inferred 
>> @safe isn't always
>> easy, and the "slap a @safe: tag at the top" isn't always 
>> going to help.
>
> Having a -safe compiler switch to make @safe the default won't 
> improve that in the slightest.

I think it's useful here to compare one aspect of Perl's approach 
to
security, its "taint" mode.  It tags insecure data to make sure it
does not affect the security of the application, and blocks 
actions
where insecure actions would otherwise occur.  The Perl invocation
accepts a couple of flags to control how taint mode works:

   -t  Like -T, but taint checks will issue warnings rather than 
fatal
       errors.  These warnings can now be controlled normally with 
"no
       warnings qw(taint)".

       Note: This is not a substitute for "-T"! This is meant to 
be used
       only as a temporary development aid while securing legacy 
code:
       for real production code and for new secure code written 
from
       scratch, always use the real -T.

   -T  turns on "taint" so you can test them.  Ordinarily these 
checks
       are done only when running setuid or setgid.  It's a good 
idea to
       turn them on explicitly for programs that run on behalf of 
someone
       else whom you might not necessarily trust, such as CGI 
programs or
       any internet servers you might write in Perl.  See perlsec 
for
       details.  For security reasons, this option must be seen by 
Perl
       quite early; usually this means it must appear early on the
       command line or in the "#!" line for systems which support 
that
       construct.

The point being, such flags provide a very simple means for the 
user
to check the execution of their code, without being terribly 
intrusive.
They can be a great convenience as a stepstone to discovering 
where
problems exist and addressing them.