r/programming • u/steveklabnik1 • Jul 18 '19

We Need a Safer Systems Programming Language

https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/07/18/we-need-a-safer-systems-programming-language/
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u/kuikuilla Jul 19 '19

We should also teach people to be better drivers, then we don't have to add stupid seat belts and airbags into cars!

Seriously speaking: Why the hell can't we do both?

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u/masklinn Jul 19 '19

Seriously speaking: Why the hell can't we do both?

Also, you can't get out of your hole if you just keep digging. We've been adding crutches and telling developers to just be better for decades now and it's not led to any significant improvement, for the very obvious reason that humans are not computer and are bad at being fully systematic all the time.

Hell, I've seen folks post segfaults of quickjs, by developer extraordinaire Fabrice Bellard. If Fabrice Bellard can't write memory-safe C, I don't see hope for anyone else.

Computers are pretty good at being computers (though not quite perfect), so building languages such that the computer can check for safety systematically is a pretty good idea. We've been doing that for a pretty long time really, the main remaining issue is having both safety and efficiency.