Hi Steve

> The reason I brought up the whole government thing was because of folks
> claiming we don't need Rust because the programmer should be careful
> and know all the ways a bad guy can exploit their code. In other words,
> turn it into a "blame the programmer" type deal. That's nice, and
> that's Utopian, but in real life some programmers are not careful, and
> Rust is a nice way to put railings on their stairs so they don't fall
> off.

So, here is the thing: Sometimes the bad guy is writing the code,
and the good guy is taking advantage of the buffer overflow.

Corporate programming drones aren't likely to be motivated (nor
be particularly good - too many meetings, you see). If they write
buggy code, that may not always be a loss.

The computer world seems to be getting way more coercive. Age
verification, client side scanning, developer verification,
crazy memory shortages making self-hosting harder, ever more
phoning home, sometimes even in Linux distributions. Centralised AI,
taking from the commons, not giving back...

Computers are very good at automating coercion. Making those
tools more effective is not a good thing, given the current
trends.

As for the programming enthusiasts: I think they'll fare better.

Look here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47559481

Normally it is bad form to link to a forum, rather than the BMJ
directly, but note how many commentators try to discredit this, as the
implications of using GPS (or an AI coding agent) dawn
on them.

regards

marc