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"No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

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Re: "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

#61

Post by darkwater »

xena wrote: post #55
darkwater wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Furries are NSFW because they look cartoonish and "unprofessional"? I don't like them but what a boring workplace would that be.

They're being satirical. People usually berate my posts because I have cartoon characters for Socratic exchanges to teach people things like Kubernetes, claiming that is "unprofessional" or something. These people are sarcastically berating my post for NOT using that Socratic system.

IMO GGP wasn't being sarcastic, but GP maybe was. Anyway I keep my thought: if a workplace, especially if in Tech or Tech-adjacent, sees furries as NSFW, it's a very boring workplace and I would run away from it at the first possibility.

Re: "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

#62

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

xena wrote: post #25
mjevans wrote: post #2

The headline is misleadingly focusing on a soundbite out of the full quote. "It's a shame, but what can we do? There really isn't anything we can do to prevent memory safety vulnerabilities from happening if the programmer doesn't want to write their code in a robust manner." -- Some (uncredited?) C programmer. Does C have more footguns as a low level language? Of course. That's part of the freedom of bringing only t…

I have a longer nuanced post to write out at some point about my feelings here, but here's the cliff's notes: We should not be developing new projects in C, and we should make it politically hard to make new projects written in C in distribution repositories. C is going to stay around for a long time and that's okay, but there are so many inherent problems of its design and implementation that make it unsuited for un…

[flagged]

Re: "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

#63

Post by pjc50 »

tialaramex wrote: post #7
mjevans wrote: post #2

The headline is misleadingly focusing on a soundbite out of the full quote. "It's a shame, but what can we do? There really isn't anything we can do to prevent memory safety vulnerabilities from happening if the programmer doesn't want to write their code in a robust manner." -- Some (uncredited?) C programmer. Does C have more footguns as a low level language? Of course. That's part of the freedom of bringing only t…

It's a deliberate echo of the famous Onion headline about America's absolutely disgraceful pretence that it couldn't do anything about all the shootings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_... > If someone has a choice, a safer more modern language can accommodate less skilled practitioners. This is the usual mistake. It's not a "skill issue". Footguns are a design mistake, they're much more…

Rather like the school shooting issue, the C issue is bound up with people at the identity level; they insist on the danger because they cannot stand the possibility of the danger being taken away from them. Their ability to use guns or C safely must not be questioned. They percieve it as an insult to take that choice away from them. They are the safe C programmer that never ships a CVE. They know that they themselves would never shoot up a school, so what the problem? Oh it's bad people. Well, that's happening somewhere else to other people, so it's fine and they can carry on.

(edit: someone was helpful to provide an example in this thread; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40438716 )

Re: "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

#64

Post by Xeamek »

pdimitar wrote: post #53

I've been doing programming for ~31 years in total and ~22 years professionally and at this point I have lost all hope that programmers at large will ever gain these mythic qualities called "self-reflection" and "introspection". Truth is, these people are simply afraid for their cozy jobs, that's all there is to it. Derivative states of mind like Stockholm Syndrome and Sunk Cost Fallacy are quite normal to appear in…

Eh, Rust would be fine if not for the fact that it's too opinionated.

Unfortunately you can't just have Rust's safety checks, without opting into restrictions that Rust designers force onto You that aren't inherent to safety checks, but more because 'that's a better practice (according to us)'.

And also, easy and fast iteration just isn't there, both because of borrow checker restrictions and compile times

Re: "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

#65

Post by p_l »

pjmlp wrote: post #56
cookiengineer wrote: post #15

Alternative headline should be "But I have been taught that using C++ makes me the better programmer" because the stereotypes of echo chambers on the internet raised a lot of unreflected programmers to be this way. There is a place for C, where there's no alternative. But that place is where 99% of programmers never work, because they are not doing kernel nor firmware development (which, in the meantime, also has a l…

Kernels have been developed in safer languages already before C became widespread outside Bell Labs, it is a myth that C is even required for that, other than historical baggage.

Especially when one adds how many "low level programming" idioms for C are, as far as I understand, undefined behaviour in C. Like assigning an address to then use as pointer to physical memory...

Which is extra visible when one looks at original UNIX sources and its many short assembly bits in separate files to handle bits of direct hw manipulation.

Re: "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

#66

Post by consp »

cookiengineer wrote: post #15

Alternative headline should be "But I have been taught that using C++ makes me the better programmer" because the stereotypes of echo chambers on the internet raised a lot of unreflected programmers to be this way. There is a place for C, where there's no alternative. But that place is where 99% of programmers never work, because they are not doing kernel nor firmware development (which, in the meantime, also has a l…

> Code should be dumb and easily maintainable.

Well ... that rules out everyone's pet favourite here to replace c.

Re: "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

#67

Post by blueflow »

xena wrote: post #55
darkwater wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Furries are NSFW because they look cartoonish and "unprofessional"? I don't like them but what a boring workplace would that be.

They're being satirical. People usually berate my posts because I have cartoon characters for Socratic exchanges to teach people things like Kubernetes, claiming that is "unprofessional" or something. These people are sarcastically berating my post for NOT using that Socratic system.

No I'm not. I expected that there is some furry or anime girl visible when i click on that link. This is the stuff i do not want to have on my screen when there are coworkers nearby.

Re: "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

#68

Post by pjc50 »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #62
xena wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a longer nuanced post to write out at some point about my feelings here, but here's the cliff's notes: We should not be developing new projects in C, and we should make it politically hard to make new projects written in C in distribution repositories. C is going to stay around for a long time and that's okay, but there are so many inherent problems of its design and implementation that make it unsuited for un…

[flagged]

Fine, but there's no reason you should be allowed to ship C in devices which have safety critical consequences to the public, including unnecessary risk of data security breaches through allowing buffer overruns. You can write in a nice safe sandbox over there.

(maybe this will eventually be part of the UL/CE requirements, "contains no C code")

Re: "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

#69

Post by p_l »

maeln wrote: post #30
xena wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a longer nuanced post to write out at some point about my feelings here, but here's the cliff's notes: We should not be developing new projects in C, and we should make it politically hard to make new projects written in C in distribution repositories. C is going to stay around for a long time and that's okay, but there are so many inherent problems of its design and implementation that make it unsuited for un…

> We should not be developing new projects in C I would give at least embedded development a pass, since you rarely do have a choice there

Mostly because you often get shipped half-broken pile of C-based SDK as your blessed environment.

Not because there's no other options (and long before Rust had its name coined)

Re: "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens

#70

Post by pico303 »

superb_dev wrote: post #12
mjevans wrote: post #2

The headline is misleadingly focusing on a soundbite out of the full quote. "It's a shame, but what can we do? There really isn't anything we can do to prevent memory safety vulnerabilities from happening if the programmer doesn't want to write their code in a robust manner." -- Some (uncredited?) C programmer. Does C have more footguns as a low level language? Of course. That's part of the freedom of bringing only t…

What’s missing from Rust? I don’t care if you use C, but don’t pretend like there isn’t another option

My problem with Rust is that it’s a hammer, and every nail is memory safety. If I’m writing a TLS library or kernel module, yes, memory safety is paramount. But if I’m writing pretty much anything else, Rust isn’t worth the slog.
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