Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

Post by sitzkrieg » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

hn_submit wrote: post #431

gtowey wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll await your Rust ports of Windows, Linux and MacOS then. This isn't really a fair take. Keep in mind that C/C++ has been the backbone of the most important software in the world since the 1970s. At that time we didn't have virtually unlimited compute and memory at our fingertips the way we do now. It was a huge improvement to have a high level language which still could be optimized nearly as well as assembly. It…

C is literally "high level assembly" and therefore lacks any guard rails you'd expect in a programming language. It's just unfortunate that so many software developers embraced C for its speed, even when it wasn't strictly needed. I always remind people that C is a systems programming language and not fit for regular application programming. For that you need an application programming language like Pascal or Java.

Post by hn_submit » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 6:24 PM UTC

davidjade wrote: post #433

hn_submit wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you that Microsoft knew for years that there were thousands if not tens of thousands of memory related bugs lurking in Windows. But their policy was "don't fix" (and "don't look") unless a remotely exploitable vulnerability was making headlines. Because every minute a developer spends finding and fixing bugs is a minute he can't spend on adding new features customers will pay for. Luckily one of the perks of…

And I can assure you that there were a number of MS research developed tools for finding memory bugs that have been used for decades at MS. There was never a don’t look / don’t fix policy while I was there. Quite the contrary.

Post by krior » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 6:29 PM UTC

sitzkrieg wrote: post #451

hn_submit wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C is literally "high level assembly" and therefore lacks any guard rails you'd expect in a programming language. It's just unfortunate that so many software developers embraced C for its speed, even when it wasn't strictly needed. I always remind people that C is a systems programming language and not fit for regular application programming. For that you need an application programming language like Pascal or Java.

yea, we certainly wouldn’t want regular user applications to run fast or respect user resources. can’t have that

Post by tmp10423288442 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 6:35 PM UTC

frizlab wrote: post #148

iLoveOncall wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The post has counts for everything that went right and nothing for what could go wrong. That's AI for you. At Amazon we have many forums to share our AI wins, but none to share AI failures or disappoinments. No wonder execs make bad decisions regarding AI, they only hear completely one-sided stories.

In $COMPANY, for the mid-yearly review, the employees were asked whether their AI usage was 1/ efficient, 2/ adoptive (integrated in the way they work) or 3/ transformative. Saying “never used it” or “I tried and it was useless” was literally not possible.

Post by Ar-Curunir » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 6:36 PM UTC

bschoepke wrote: post #442

hn_submit wrote: post #389

To me this merely signals how broken C++ development really is. Most if not all of the bugs being uncovered are memory related and therefore intimately tied to the mental memory model of C and C++, namely manual memory management. It's fine for a C or C++ program encompassing a couple hundred lines but beyond that it's a liability. C and C++ are simply not fit for purpose when large scale software projects are concer…

Rust certainly helps for certain classes of errors but doesn't help at all for logic errors or incompletely understood requirements or occasional need for hacks due to business needs.