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I frankly haven't found an ecosystem in which I feel more comfortable than the one from C.
Yes, C has its vulnerabilities, but for my own projects I do in my own time, I will use any language I have fun with, even if it has huge problems.
I have personally tried to build one in C but the parsing was the real pain, I managed to have a tokenizer, barely found how to make an AST and never figured out what to do with. All parsing tutorials are about parsing mathematical expressions, I found it hard to adapt to shell grammar.
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While I’m certainly not a good C programmer by any means (I have been exploring Rust more recently as an alternative my use-cases), I find this piece very interesting “Some People Were Meant for C” https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21//research/paper...
> The C language leads a double life: as an application programming language of yesteryear, perpetuated by circumstance, and as a systems programming language which remains a weapon of choice decades after its creation. This essay is a C programmer’s reaction to the call to abandon ship. It questions several properties commonly held to define the experience of using C; these include unsafety, undefined behaviour, and…
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Why is that? C is still widespread in embedded and often the only choice. A lot of programs are written in C and need to be maintained. C is a simple language and powerful when used correctly. Of course we want people to keep using it.
It's not possible for humans to write correct and secure C code on an ongoing and consistent basis. Even when people pay careful attention, problems arise: consider the various 0days in sudo. C isn't simple: it's simplistic : its apparent simplicity comes from shifting the burden of safety from compilers to humans. Consequently, we spend trillions of dollars on dealing with the consequences of security vulnerabilitie…
https://drewdevault.com/2019/03/25/Rust-is-not-a-good-C-repl...
"Safety. Yes, Rust is more safe. I don’t really care. In light of all of these problems, I’ll take my segfaults and buffer overflows."
"I understand that many people, particularly those already enamored with Rust, won’t agree with much of this article. But now you know why we are still writing C, and hopefully you’ll stop bloody bothering us about it."
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It's not possible for humans to write correct and secure C code on an ongoing and consistent basis. Even when people pay careful attention, problems arise: consider the various 0days in sudo. C isn't simple: it's simplistic : its apparent simplicity comes from shifting the burden of safety from compilers to humans. Consequently, we spend trillions of dollars on dealing with the consequences of security vulnerabilitie…
> It's not possible for humans to write correct and secure C code on an ongoing and consistent basis. https://drewdevault.com/2019/03/25/Rust-is-not-a-good-C-repl... "Safety. Yes, Rust is more safe. I don’t really care. In light of all of these problems, I’ll take my segfaults and buffer overflows." "I understand that many people, particularly those already enamored with Rust, won’t agree with much of this article. B…
The problem is that when you write a program in C for the public, this program's buffer overflows and segfaults aren't a problem only for you, but also for everyone around you. Security vulnerabilities are a serious problem. You can think of them as a form of software pollution: "Safety. Yes. Asbestos is unsafe. I don't really care. In light of all the these problems with fiberglass, I'll take my lung cancer and expensive structure remediation".
See what I mean? We all have an interest in secure software, and the aesthetic preferences expressed in the article to which you've linked have to take a back seat to ecosystem robustness and information security.
Unfortunately, this pro-C cowboy attitude is entrenched in this industry. It's going to take a lot of retirements to move us forward.
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Why is that? C is still widespread in embedded and often the only choice. A lot of programs are written in C and need to be maintained. C is a simple language and powerful when used correctly. Of course we want people to keep using it.
It's not possible for humans to write correct and secure C code on an ongoing and consistent basis. Even when people pay careful attention, problems arise: consider the various 0days in sudo. C isn't simple: it's simplistic : its apparent simplicity comes from shifting the burden of safety from compilers to humans. Consequently, we spend trillions of dollars on dealing with the consequences of security vulnerabilitie…
While the Rust definitely is way more helpful than C, when it comes to writing secure code. I'd argue that generally the following holds:
It's not possible for humans to write correct and secure code on an ongoing and consistent basis.