[WalterBright]

> But there is a big difference between airline safety and software safety

I've worked professionally in both industries; they are not fundamentally different. Software practices can learn a lot from aviation practice, but they seem determined to spend decades rediscovering the methods the bitter, expensive way.

For example, software is still stuck in the dark ages where the idea is better training / better programmers / more punishment will prevent these sorts of failures.

[krisoft]

> For example, software is still stuck in the dark ages where the idea is better training / better programmers / more punishment will prevent these sorts of failures.

What is your source on this? This goes against what anyone at any company where I have worked at ever believed.

No-fault root cause analysis, process improvements, inherently safer practices, languages, libraries is what every place aimed for. I don’t even know what you might mean by punishment?

[oblio]

There are many, many programmers, you can see their comments right here, that fit (for many, probably despite their age), into what you could call brogrammer/cowboy coder/lone star/rockstar developer types and that will try to shame developers making mistakes or present certain types of failures as inevitable, "you just need better developers".

You can frequently see them come out in Rust threads, they're generally against it, coming from C/C++, it seems a common attitude amongst low level devs in my experience (there's a thing with "hardware" sounding "hard" which I guess makes them feel more "hardcore").

It's obviously not universal, but it's super easy to find if you search for some programming language discussions.

[salawat]

Okay, that criticism is legit, but they also have a point, and more importantly, they have docs, tooling, and cross-compiling experience. When you're implementing the basic C machine, or kernel, or drivers on which every other tool chain ever conceived at some level relies on for new architectures and hardware, you are operating in the most constrained setting of just about any programmer today. It is different, and you have to think different because you're trying to make sure you're getting the foundation right.

When the docs exist, and are accurate they can somewhat hide behind "get better programmers"; when they aren'the some can be even moreso, because there is nothing worse than trying to drive poorly documented hardware. It either works or it doesn't.

T. QA guy amongst a bunch of dev types who regularly points out how they do a great job implementing the wrong thing on a regular basis, and helps shape process to make that harder.

The fact they come out in Rust threads has more to do with Rust's evangelist types running afoul of the long standing love of "things that work". Somewhat in the cowboy camp's defense, none of theach no guardrail's type ever turns down a good static analyzer or test suite once you figure out how to get it smoothly integrated into their process. That's where I think Rust gets their outreach wrong.

Don't try to sell development on a brand new lang to learn and replace what they are using. Use the lessons you learn with making that lang, and improve the tooling they are familiar with. We don't have an infinite capacity to learn a new lang and library ecosystem every 6 months to just keep doing what we do. Once you get savvy enough with C and where the spec holes are, you've gotten to a point where you've gotten insight into how things actually work many levels more accurately than just about any other programming toolchain, and also onenjoy of the only languages completely divested of licensing lock-in on the planet.

There is also the point that you can'take really argue against C's effectiveness. It's always the first code to be made functional on any new silicon. I'm interested to see if Rust supplant's it, but I'm weary of any language that's heavily reliant on LLVM as I'm getting more savvy on how licensing risk tends to play out in the long run.

You can't beat the immortality and ubiquity of GPL. It is as close to the unrevocable toolbox from the public domain you'll ever get.

[WalterBright]

> What is your source on this?

See "Trust the programmer" https://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/spirit_of_c.html

Also, a general belief among C++ programmers that better training is the answer to programming bugs. This belief is slowly fading, but it's got a long way to go. Scott Meyers' books on Effective C++ represent a lot of effort to educate programmers out of making mistakes. For example, from the table of contents: "Prefer consts, enums, and inlines to #defines". If C++ was an airplane, #define would simply be removed.

> I don’t even know what you might mean by punishment?

There are several calls for punishment in the comments on the article.

[buran77]

I think the work of the people operating a system is just as important as the one of the programmer. You can build the very solid plane or software and then have it fail due to being operated in the wrong fashion.

The question is whether both sides are doing their best, within reason, to mitigate issues. The programmer doing everything right while the admins forget to patch for years won't change a thing. The opposite is true, patching or configuring correctly won't do a thing if the system is full of "built-in" holes.

It's not a stretch to think of a setup where specific conditions that define this "within reason" are established for software developers and administrators. It's what an audit should normally uncover: weaknesses in the process, points for improvement, etc. Only this time it would be in the form of general and specific guidelines that get progressively stronger as time passes. It's not a sure thing but it raises the bar enough for most ransomware attacks to become cost prohibitive for the attacker.

[grawprog]

>If C++ was an airplane, #define would simply be removed.

So would that make D the airplane version of C++?

[WalterBright]

In my paper "The Origins of the D Programming Language" I enumerate many direct influences aircraft design has had on D.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3386323#:~:text=The%20D%2....

BTW, I practice dual path in my personal life. If I'm doing something risky, I have a backup. For example, when I work under my car, I put the car on two sets of jackstands, even though I use stands that are rated for trucks. I'd never rely on a single rope/piton if rock climbing. I cringe when I see climbers doing that. I carry an extra coat in the car in winter, and water when driving in the desert.

[grawprog]

Thanks for sharing. I knew some of D's history, but there was stuff in there I hadn't read before.

I like much of the way D's designed. It doesn't try to be flashy, gimicky or different for the sake of being different. It gives you a set of practical tools and doesn't try to be too opinionated on the way they should be used. It mostly makes it hard to shoot yourself in the foot. But if you really want to you can. You gotta really try though.

[salawat]

That's defense in depth as applied to system design. Think of it like cleaning out a cat box, and only having bags with holes. You only need a couple bags whose holes don't line up, and you're good to go.

The simpler they are, the easier they are to learn. The easier they are to learn, and less "opinionated", the less resistance they tend to build up against adoption.

D is interesting, because it seems, from my experience, D, like Ada, has been a hypeless language. Though I haven't checked on licensing encumber meets that might be behind that.

[mcguire]

In about 2008 I started working for SAIC, on a contract to NASA's "Enterprise Applications Competency Center". While I was waiting for my computer and all the accounts and permissions to get set up, I was sent to do a code review for a minor application written in Flash/Flex/ActionScript + Java as was popular at the time, written by one guy. Everything looked pretty decent to me, except that he'd done all of the authentication/authorization in the Flash frontend. I pointed out that anyone who could connect to the app and fake the protocol could do anything the app could do, at a minimum. He said yeah, he'd have to do something about that. It went into production the next week. He's now part of the architecture/"engineering" group.

All of the things you mention are great, but they don't really address the problem. You need developers who know what the issues are and are willing to do the work to fix them even though they don't add anything to the feature list. In my experience, I don't have much reason to believe that today's developers are any better about that than yesterday's. There is a lot of security cargo-culting going on, which probably does improve the situation, but there's also a lot of "bootcamp" developers without the background to know that there are issues.

[salawat]

First thing I have a group of developers do in a new context is learn the existing business process without automating or writing a line of code. They can dissect, name, and research any code they want generated by who they are to build for, but no writing until they get the business context.

You'll never build a better tool than the one that eases your own pain. Make the user's pain your own, and beautiful things happen.

[mcguire]

That would seem to require the software industry to take responsibility.

The software industry is to responsibility roughly as surgeons are to checklists.