Does memory leak? (1995) • Hacker News Board

Re: Does memory leak? (1995)

#151

Post by kragen » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #133

alex_young wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costa Rica hasn’t had a standing military since 1948. They are in one of the most politically unstable parts of the world and do just fine without worry of invasion. The US hasn’t been attacked militarily on its own soil in the modern era. The US military monopoly hasn’t prevented horrific attacks such as 9/11 executed by groups claiming to be motivated by our foreign military campaigns. I think there is a valid ques…

It's a valid question, but realistically if Costa Rica were invaded a number of countries would step in to help them. I love Costa Rica, it's one of the most beautiful countries I've been to and I do appreciate the political statement their making, but at the same time they're in a pretty unique situation. As for the ethics of working on weapons, I think there is a lot of grey when it comes to software. It tends to c…

In the last 40 years, Panama and Grenada were invaded, Honduras had a coup, Colombia had a civil war, Venezuela is currently having a sort of civil war, Nicaragua's government was overthrown by a foreign-armed terrorist campaign, and El Salvador's government sent death squads out to kill its subjects. Nobody stepped in to help any of them except Colombia. Why would Costa Rica be different?

> Would I work on software that does a better job of, say, facial recognition to lessen the likelihood of a predator drone killing an innocent civilian?

The logical extreme of this is Death Note: the person who has the power simply chooses who should die, and that person dies, immediately and with no opportunity for resistance and no evidence of who killed them. Is that your ideal world? Who do you want to have that power — to define who plays the role of an “innocent civilian” in your sketch — and what do you do if they lose control of it? What do you do if the person or bureaucracy to which you have given such omnipotence turns out not to be incorruptible and perfectly loving?

I suggest watching Slaughterbots: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA

Re: Does memory leak? (1995)

#152

Post by AtlasBarfed » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #104

jmpman wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Straight out of college, I was offered a job writing software for missiles. Extremely interesting area, working for my adjunct professor’s team, who I highly admired and whose class was the best of my college career. The pay was on par with all my other offers. I didn’t accept for two reasons. First, I logically agreed that the missiles were supporting our armed services and I believed that our government was general…

> I came on to a project which was 5 years into a 3 year schedule, and not expected to ship for another 2 years. Shocked, I asked my team lead “Why didn’t the government just cancel the contract and assign the work to another company?”, her reply, “If they did that, the product likely wouldn’t be delivered in under two years, so they stick with us”. I understood that this mentality was pervasive, and would ultimately…

I vehemently and violently disagree!

The average project achieves 1.5 of the triples.

Here are the true constraints though:

- Schedule - Meets Requirements - Cost - Process - Usefulness/Polish

Yes, usefulness and meets requirements aren't the same thing, and anyone who has done the madness of large scale enterprise software will be nodding their heads.

What really bogs down most software projects is that "quality" means different things to different actors in projects. Project Managers want to follow process and meet political goals. Users want usefulness, polish, and efficiency. Directors/management want requirements fulfilled they dictate (often reporting and other junk that don't add to ROI).

And that I like to say "pick two"

Re: Does memory leak? (1995)

#153

Post by jschwartzi » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #145

amw-zero wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll find that for very serious, industrial applications, a conservative mindset prevails. C may not be trendy at the moment, but it powers the computing world. Its shortcomings are also extremely well known and also statically analyzable. Also, think about when flight software started being written. Was Rust an option? And once it came out, do you expect that programmers who are responsible for millions of people’…

You're advocating throwing baby out with bathwater. Rust interops with C seamlessly, doesn't it? You don't have to throw out good code to use a better language or framework. C may be statically analyzable to some degree, but if Rust's multithreading is truly provable, then new code can be Rust and of course still use the tried and true C libraries. Disclaimer: I still haven't actually learned any Rust, so my logic is…

The issue is that you’re trading a problem space that is very well understood for one that isn’t. Making a safe program in C is all about being explicit about resource allocation and controlling resources. So we tend to require that habit in development. It’s socialized. The only thing you’d be doing is using technology to replace the socialization. And you’d be adding new problems from Rust that don’t exist in the C world.

It’s tempting in a lot of cases to read the data sheet and determine that the product is good enough. But there are a lot of engineering and organizational challenges that aren’t written in the marketing documents.

Those challenges have to be searched for and social and technological tools must be developed to solve those challenges.

As an exercise in use of technology it looks easy but there’s an entire human and organizational side to it that gets lost in discussions on HN.

Re: Does memory leak? (1995)

#154

Post by hechang1997 » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

rowanG077 wrote: post #97

0xffff2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The embedded world is very slow to change, so you can read about "modern approaches" (i.e. approaches used today) in any book about embedded programming written in the last 30 years. I currently work on spacecraft flight software and the only real advance on this project over something like the space shuttle that I can point to is that we're trying out some continuous integration on this project. We would like to use…

I find it interesting that such critical code is written in C. Why not use something with a lot more (easily)statically provable properties. Like Rust or Agda?

Isn't Ada already used in areospace industry?

Re: Does memory leak? (1995)

#155

Post by blattimwind » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

ufo wrote: post #148

blattimwind wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cleaning up memory is an antipattern for many tools , especially of the EVA/IPO model (input-process-output). For example, cp(1) in preserve hard links mode has to keep track of things in a table; cleaning it up at the end of the operation is a waste of time. Someone "fixed" the leak to make valgrind happy and by doing so introduced a performance regression. Another example might be a compiler; it's pointless to deal…

Is there is a way to tell Valgrind that a certain memory allocation is intentionally being "leaked", and should not produce a warning?

https://valgrind.org/docs/manual/manual-core.html#manual-cor...

Re: Does memory leak? (1995)

#156

Post by NextHendrix » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #145

amw-zero wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll find that for very serious, industrial applications, a conservative mindset prevails. C may not be trendy at the moment, but it powers the computing world. Its shortcomings are also extremely well known and also statically analyzable. Also, think about when flight software started being written. Was Rust an option? And once it came out, do you expect that programmers who are responsible for millions of people’…

You're advocating throwing baby out with bathwater. Rust interops with C seamlessly, doesn't it? You don't have to throw out good code to use a better language or framework. C may be statically analyzable to some degree, but if Rust's multithreading is truly provable, then new code can be Rust and of course still use the tried and true C libraries. Disclaimer: I still haven't actually learned any Rust, so my logic is…

Wanting to suddenly start using rust would mean putting any and all tools through a tool qualification process, which is incredibly time consuming and vastly expensive. In the field of safety critical software, fancy new languages are totally ignored for, at least partially, this reason. What's really safer, a new language that claims to be "safe" or a language with a formally verified compiler and toolchain where all of your developers have decades of experience with it and lots of library code that has been put through stringent independent verification and validation procedures, with proven track record in multiple other safety critical projects?

Re: Does memory leak? (1995)

#157

Post by GordonS » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #149

GordonS wrote: post #42

A bit OT, but I wonder how I'd feel if I was offered a job working on software for missiles. I'm sure the technical challenge would be immensely interesting, and I could tell myself that I cared more about accuracy and correctness than other potential hires... but from a moral standpoint, I don't think I could bring myself to do it. I realise of course that the military uses all sorts of software, including line of b…

To offer a contrarian point of view: I’d jump at such an opportunity... to work in such a technically interesting area AND help keep my country technologically relevant. It’s a no-brainer.

For me (and I would imagine a lot of people), it's far from a no-brainer.

While it would undoubtedly be interesting from a technical standpoint, there is a serious moral conundrum - even if it was an ideal world where you trusted your government not to start wars based on flimsy or falsified evidence, start wars for profit, or sell weapons to less scrupulous governments.

Re: Does memory leak? (1995)

#158

Post by lainga » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #42

A bit OT, but I wonder how I'd feel if I was offered a job working on software for missiles. I'm sure the technical challenge would be immensely interesting, and I could tell myself that I cared more about accuracy and correctness than other potential hires... but from a moral standpoint, I don't think I could bring myself to do it. I realise of course that the military uses all sorts of software, including line of b…

Cue the picture of the protestors holding a sign reading "this machine kills innocents!"... next to a MIM-104. There are many types of missiles.

Re: Does memory leak? (1995)

#159

Post by prostheticvamp » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #145

amw-zero wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll find that for very serious, industrial applications, a conservative mindset prevails. C may not be trendy at the moment, but it powers the computing world. Its shortcomings are also extremely well known and also statically analyzable. Also, think about when flight software started being written. Was Rust an option? And once it came out, do you expect that programmers who are responsible for millions of people’…

You're advocating throwing baby out with bathwater. Rust interops with C seamlessly, doesn't it? You don't have to throw out good code to use a better language or framework. C may be statically analyzable to some degree, but if Rust's multithreading is truly provable, then new code can be Rust and of course still use the tried and true C libraries. Disclaimer: I still haven't actually learned any Rust, so my logic is…

> Disclaimer: I still haven't actually learned any Rust, so my logic is CIO-level of potential ignorance

And yet you seem to write with such confidence. /Are/ you a CIO? It’s the only thing that makes sense.

Re: Does memory leak? (1995)

#160

Post by dahart » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #151

3pt14159 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a valid question, but realistically if Costa Rica were invaded a number of countries would step in to help them. I love Costa Rica, it's one of the most beautiful countries I've been to and I do appreciate the political statement their making, but at the same time they're in a pretty unique situation. As for the ethics of working on weapons, I think there is a lot of grey when it comes to software. It tends to c…

In the last 40 years, Panama and Grenada were invaded, Honduras had a coup, Colombia had a civil war, Venezuela is currently having a sort of civil war, Nicaragua's government was overthrown by a foreign-armed terrorist campaign, and El Salvador's government sent death squads out to kill its subjects. Nobody stepped in to help any of them except Colombia. Why would Costa Rica be different? > Would I work on software…

> The logical extreme of this [...] Is that your ideal world?

Clearly not. Would you please not post an extreme straw-man and turn this into polarizing ideological judgement? The post you’re responding to very clearly agreed that war is morally questionable, and very clearly argued for middle ground or better, not going to some extreme.

You don’t have to agree with war or endorse any kind of killing in any way to see that some of the activities involved by some of the people are trying to prevent damage rather than cause it.

Intentionally choosing not to acknowledge the nuance in someone’s point of view is ironic in this discussion, because that’s one of the ways that wars start.