Greenwashing

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday, May 27, 2020 5:37:17 AM MDT Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-
d wrote:
>  From https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/greenwashing.asp, the top
> Google search result:
>
> Greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression or providing
> misleading information about how a company's products are more
> environmentally sound. Greenwashing is considered an unsubstantiated
> claim to deceive consumers into believing that a company's products are
> environmentally friendly.
>
> Paraphrasing for our context:
>
> Greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression or providing
> misleading information about how a codebase is more memory-safe.
> Greenwashing is considered an unsubstantiated claim to deceive readers
> into believing that a codebase is memory-safe.
>
> If this is greenwashing, then DIP 1028 is doing it.

Indeed.

A number of us have argued with Walter that DIP 1028 turns @safe into a lie
and that the compiler should _never_ treat anything as @safe unless it can
mechanicaly verify it or the programmer has explicitly marked it with
@trusted. But for some reason, he thinks that having a "special rule" that
non-extern(D) function declarations aren't treated as @safe by default like
all of the functions that the compiler can actually mechanically verify adds
too much complexity to the language. @safe isn't necessarily a problem, but
@safe shouldn't have a huge blown in it in the process.

Based on some of Walter's comments, it also sounds like he intends to make
nothrow the default in another DIP, which is also a terrible idea. I'm
increasingly worried about the future of D with some of where these DIPs are
going.

- Jonathan M Davis