Peter Duffy said on Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:26:24 +0000

>A lot to say about this. See inline comments below. TL:DR - no worries:
>just my two-pennyworth :)
>
>On Mon, 2026-03-23 at 21:14 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>> Peter Duffy said on Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:49:22 +0000
>>
>> > Maybe memory safety is actually not a property of the language or
>> > the
>> > program - but of the programmer?
>> >
>> > Most languages have features which can be very useful, but which
>> > can
>> > also be dangerous if misused, either carelessly or deliberately
>> > (pointer arithmetic in C is only one example). The onus is on the
>> > programmer being skilled and diligent enough to use the features
>> > safely.
>>
>> In other words, only the ultra-careful need apply for a programming
>> position.
>>
>I used "diligent" rather than "careful" (although the latter is clearly
>a subset of the former). In my definition (probably not the standard
>one), "diligent" means being conscientious and honourable enough to go
>the extra mile - or even 100 miles - to ensure that something is done
>properly, rather than just botched. And - if it is temporarily need to
>botch something to fix a critical problem, having the humility to admit
>to it, placing warnings and caveats in place, and revisiting/improving
>the situation at the first opportunity.

We could debate the benefits and costs of adherence to this degree of
diligence, but the fact is that a lot of bad code gets written,
damaging society and the programming profession. At some time in the
future you, a diligent programmer, might find yourself hamstrung by
actual laws requiring you to jump through all sorts of hoops (or pay
lots of bribes) to be allowed to ply your trade.

Safe languages save programmer diligence for things like better
algorithms, better analysis, better interactions with users and
specifiers, etc. And they prevent a lot of nasty code by programmers
pretending to be diligent, or programmers not even bothering.

And what in the world do you have against Rust? Yeah, it's harder to
get it to compile, but once it compiles it's probably going to do
exactly what you intended. Safely.

Oh, and Kevin Chadwick, same goes for Ada.


SteveT

Steve Litt

http://444domains.com