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It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

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Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#861

Post by dtornabene »

userbinator wrote: post #815
dcow wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think memory-safe languages are some anti-jailbreaking/rooting conspiracy... well, have you heard of Java? No. Rust saves countless hours of frustration by eliminating frustratingly-hard-to-debug mistakes that humans commonly make when writing programs. Rust is pedantic, so you don't have to be. Rust saves companies money because Rust software requires noticeably less maintenance. Try it sometime. Don't worry,…

It's not just about jailbreaking or rooting. A lot of other user-hostilities can be defeated because something isn't quite as secure as it could be, and from that perspective, making things "more secure" is active hostility. "We are not truly free if we do not have the freedom to make mistakes." I guarantee that man will always be able to break what man can make Not with the rise of strong crypto. Java isn't used for…

the idea that "making things 'more secure' is active hostility", is some grade A trolling, congratulations on that.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#862

Post by jcdentonunatco »

slashdev wrote: post #549

I'm just a programmer who's been doing this for 20 years. I don't have the credentials of Mark, who is a legend. But I fully agree with him. There will be specific exceptions, but if you have the choice between Rust and C++ you would be making a big mistake to not choose Rust. The language is simpler, cleaner, safer, and more enjoyable to work with. The build tools are far more pleasant. The IDE experience is compara…

"the hiring market is way better for rust"

Lmao. Not even close.

"Programmers currently using Rust are superior to programmers using C++"

Hahahah that's cute.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#863

Post by spacechild1 »

howinteresting wrote: post #785
spacechild1 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about ADTs, but I'm skeptical they would help me for my own programs since most of my logic errors boil down to wrong math...

It is true that Rust won't catch bad math or a flipped not sign, but it catches just about everything else, which is very valuable since brainpower can be devoted to just the subset of issues it doesn't catch.

> but it catches just about everything else

Sounds pretty hyperbolic to me.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#864

Post by shmerl »

jokoon wrote: post #766

I highly doubt that it's easy to hire rust developers. Maybe it's possible to hire c++ dev and make them work on a rust project? Anyhow, is there a qt equivalent for rust? Can rust really compete with c++? I've read rust code and I'm sorry but it seems like the steep learning curve is just not worth it, even if the benefits are big. I still believe rust fills the same niche of ada, meaning tight requirements. Most c+…

Hiring C++ developers isn't easy either. Same for reading C++. So learning curve isn't an argument if you compare Rust to it.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#865

Post by tekknik »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #429
user8501 wrote: post #271

Seems like kind of a crazy thing to say. The first thing to note, is that we should obviously be free to write software like games and other utilities in whatever language we want, especially if they’re not connected to the internet. Second, why exactly are we demonizing people now? Suddenly declaring a language deprecated not only doesn’t actually make any sense, but also seems like a great way to influence people’s…

Well, he's the CTO at Azure and apparently he's telling his people to avoid using C/C++ for new projects. They no longer have that freedom there because he just told them so. What people do in their spare time is of course their own business. I believe other big companies have similar reservations about using C/C++ on new projects. And given the cost of cleaning up the security mess that using C/C++ has caused these…

I work in games for a very large studio, C++ is not going anywhere anytime soon (see Unreal Engine). The vast majority of experience is in C++ and no other language.

Server side services (read outside of Unreal Engine Server) are not written in C++ however.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#866

Post by imron »

DannyBee wrote: post #799
imron wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the use-after-free?

Look - can we just admit that most C++ apps don't have thousands of use-after-free errors? Of those use-after-free bugs that exist, they are a large source/percentage of the exploitable security bugs in C++ apps for sure. But again, it's not like apps are usually just littered with use-after-free. Like you may find one in a several million line of code app. They are not that common of a mistake, and FWIW, 100% of the…

> Look - can we just admit that most C++ apps don't have thousands of use-after-free errors?

For sure! It's those one-every-million-lines-of-code ones that are the problem, and that slip through code review and rear their head only in production at odd hours of the day.

> this sort of thing is not going to convince anyone to use rust that doesn't want to already

My post was in reply to someone asking the question what does Rust give you over modern C++, and this was an example showing that modern C++ still has its holes.

I'm not a Rust absolutist, nor do I think everything should be written (or rewritten) in Rust, but the biggest thing going in its favour is that offloads the cognitive load of checking lifetimes and ownership to the compiler, and that turns whole classes of runtime bugs in to compile time bugs.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#867

Post by imron »

ncmncm wrote: post #694
imron wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the use-after-free?

Because nobody does this. An sv is a temporary you pass down the call chain, where it is uniformly perfectly safe. This is why I say it takes extra work to get things wrong. Every example purporting to show "unavoidable" memory faults is super contrived. You have to turn off compiler warnings to be able to miss it.

My second example (the one you replied to) doesn't require you to turn off compiler warnings.

It might seem contrived, and it is, but it's the essence of a bug that has happened in the real world, distilled to a 10 line example.

And yeah, "use things properly or they will blow up", but enough people don't do that (or mostly do but occasionally slip up) that it becomes a problem.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#868

Post by krychu »

nindalf wrote: post #587
galangalalgol wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're commanding officer orders a bayonet charge in the late 19th century it is safe to say they don't understand the change rifles have brought to the fight. Reference Picket's charge.

I was saying a commanders accuracy with a rifle isn’t relevant to their ability to decide tactics or strategy. Nothing you’ve said contradicts what I said.

It’s relevant. It’s harder to accept and follow a leader that can’t aim and shoot.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#869

Post by ygra »

zerr wrote: post #503
virgulino wrote: post #251

You could say that Mark Russinovich is a hacker's hacker, the foremost Windows hacker, and a reverse engineering wizard. It was he who discovered and blew the whistle on the Sony rootkit scandal, for example, after finding and reverse engineering it on his machine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk... He extensively reverse engineered and documented "Windows Internals" details before joinin…

With all due respect, this is coming from a Win32 API C programmer who happens to save the code in files with .cpp extension. In other words, not familiar with modern C++.

This may be a habit picked up by people writing more-modern-than-C89 C code that also has to be compiled by MSVC. Since MSVC is foremost a C++ compiler it was stuck in C89 for a very long time (I think it's better now, but old habits probably die hard).

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#870

Post by ncmncm »

cercatrova wrote: post #845
ncmncm wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do. "New programs should not be in C++" means, exactly, "You should be laid off so they can hire me instead". If you had something that could do what I need, I would be using it already. It cannot. But you want to bypass me and fool managers, instead, with FUD about memory faults I don't code and have not in years. I have spent strictly more time in the past five years filing compiler bug reports than chasing memor…

Have you even used Rust? Based on your other comments, it just seems like you have an axe to grind against anyone who uses Rust, coming up with accusations of "Rust devs trying to take 'er jerbs"

I like Rust fine. But Rust is not suitable for my work, where C++ is.

So, anyone saying "no programs should be written in C++" is saying, exactly, that I should not be able to do my work, and that I should not have employment.

That my current employer will not necessarily obey such an instruction does not make the attempt any the less offensive.

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