Fantastic exchange from DConf

[Dibyendu Majumdar via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 14 May 2017 at 01:30:47 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:
> On Sunday, 14 May 2017 at 00:05:56 UTC, Dibyendu Majumdar wrote:
>> (a) Trust the programmer.
>
> That's the first and most deadly mistake. Buffer overflows and 
> null pointers alone have caused hundreds of millions of dollars 
> of damages. I think we can say that this trust is misplaced.
>

I should have added that the C11 charter also says:

<quote>
12. Trust the programmer, as a goal, is outdated in respect to 
the security and safety programming communities. While it should 
not be totally disregarded as a facet of the spirit of C, the C11 
version of the C Standard should take into account that 
programmers need the ability to check their work.
<endquote>

In real terms though tools like ASAN and Valgrind if used from 
the start usually allow you to catch most of the issues. Most 
likely even better tools for C will come about in time.


>> But I don't see how languages like D or Rust can replace C for 
>> certain types of use cases.
>
> Maybe you can argue for the use of C in embedded systems and in 
> OS's, although I see no reason why Rust can't eventually 
> overtake C there.

I think Rust is a promising language but I don't know enough 
about it to comment. My impression about Rust is that:

a) Rust has a steep learning curve as a language.
b) If you want to do things that C allows you to do, then Rust is 
no more safer than C.

Regards