C++ creator rebuts White House warning
infoworld.com
C++ creator rebuts White House warning
1–10 of 65 posts
Re: C++ creator rebuts White House warning
#2On a recent CppCon panel[0], after much discussion of ecosystem-wide safety and how "safe" programming languages don't automatically create "safe" systems (which has merit), he basically had to shrug his shoulders when someone asked about thread safety.
Re: C++ creator rebuts White House warning
#3> I find it surprising that the writers of those government documents seem oblivious of the strengths of contemporary C++ and the efforts to provide strong safety guarantees
No, Bjarne needs to realize that RAII and smart pointers are an old concept now, and they have shown to be insufficient, for decades now.
The bar for safety has been raised, and the Modern C++ is so behind, they don't even understand the issue, and still talk like it's about the C sins, or programmers not using it properly, or "but what about other bugs?".
The contemporary C++ is still a safety-third design where safety always loses to performance and backwards compatibility. The std::span has been standardized without .at(), and they're just getting around to adding it. Bounds checking by default on `operator[]` is one thing where C++ could be on par with Rust right now, but that is going to be relegated to an optional profile.
Re: C++ creator rebuts White House warning
#4> Of the billions of lines of C++, few completely follow modern guidelines
AKA, we’ve created a messy monster that’s out of our control, please don’t blame us.
Re: C++ creator rebuts White House warning
#5Maybe they need to fork a version of C++ that doesn't have all the dangerous features and forces developers to write only safe C++. It could be called C++--.
Re: C++ creator rebuts White House warning
#6Stroustrup as always fails to recognize the vast surface area of C++ features, foot cannons, and the heavy weight of C compatibility around C++ neck.
C++ barely made sense in 1995. It makes absolutely no sense today.
Re: C++ creator rebuts White House warning
#7> I find it surprising that the writers of those government documents seem oblivious of the strengths of contemporary C++ and the efforts to provide strong safety guarantees No, Bjarne needs to realize that RAII and smart pointers are an old concept now, and they have shown to be insufficient, for decades now. The bar for safety has been raised, and the Modern C++ is so behind, they don't even understand the issue, a…
[deleted]
Re: C++ creator rebuts White House warning
#8About a year ago, Stroustrup wrote a similar response[0] to a similar statement from the NSA[1].
I wasn't really convinced and am more in agreement with this response to Stroustrup[2] from an embedded Linux developer. To quote from near the end of their response to Stroustrup:
> In the meantime, it is unfair for Dr. Stroustrup to call safe programming languages novelties or to pretend that C++ isn’t already far behind the times on this. This was already an important criticism of C++ decades ago, when Java first came out in the 90’s and was referred to as a “managed programming language.”
I'm not really buying that C++ is really all that commonly safe when we have stats like these[3]:
> A recent study found that 60-70% of vulnerabilities in iOS and macOS are memory safety vulnerabilities. Microsoft estimates that 70% of all vulnerabilities in their products over the last decade have been memory safety issues. Google estimated that 90% of Android vulnerabilities are memory safety issues. An analysis of 0-days that were discovered being exploited in the wild found that more than 80% of the exploited vulnerabilities were memory safety issues 1.
> The Slammer worm from 2003 was a buffer overflow (out-of-bounds write). So was WannaCry (out-of-bounds write). The Trident exploit against iPhones used three different memory safety vulnerabilities (two use-after-frees and an out-of-bounds read). HeartBleed was a memory safety problem (out-of-bounds read). Stagefright on Android too (out-of-bounds writes). The Ghost vulnerability in glibc? You betcha (out-of-bounds write).
[0]: https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2023/p27...
[1]: https://media.defense.gov/2022/Nov/10/2003112742/-1/-1/0/CSI...
[2]: https://www.thecodedmessage.com/posts/stroustrup-response/
Re: C++ creator rebuts White House warning
#9I agree; you can write perfectly safe and noncompromisingly performant code in C++ much better than any language today.
It's genuinely difficult to understand why Rust gets rammed down everyone's throats lately; do they really think developers coming out of universities today are too stupid to grasp memory management? If that's the case, why not have everyone code in Scratch?
That memo reads like "to avoid wet pants, everyone should now pee sitting down"; some of us can aim...
Re: C++ creator rebuts White House warning
#10About a year ago, Stroustrup wrote a similar response[0] to a similar statement from the NSA[1]. I wasn't really convinced and am more in agreement with this response to Stroustrup[2] from an embedded Linux developer. To quote from near the end of their response to Stroustrup: > In the meantime, it is unfair for Dr. Stroustrup to call safe programming languages novelties or to pretend that C++ isn’t already far behin…
> I'm not really buying that C++ is really all that commonly safe when we have states like these[3]:
It's not. At this point, I cannot in good faith say that he is not lying, either to us or himself.