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by ncmncm 1465 days ago
Yes.

In two words, Google programmers are, as a rule, vastly overrated. They can maybe rope in 100,000 cores on one query, but nothing in their recruiting selects for good coding habits.

Anybody coding C++ in this day'n'age and getting use-after faults needs to go to the back of the line. They will certainly succeed in writing new Rust code that is as bad as their old C++ code. (Note: deadlocks are officially "safe".)

Recently Google made a big push to change the std::string constructor from a null char* to yield the empty string, instead of honestly segfaulting. That failed. They had a half-baked (and hellish, for users) async/await design they tried to put up as worth delaying the whole feature into 2023. That failed.

2 comments

So where are those mythical "good C++ programmers"? I keep hearing that if only you find them, your C++ will be secure. But so far nobody has found them. Not Google, not Microsoft, not Mozilla.

Rust succeeds, because it does not rely on programmers writing bug-free code. Bad Rust code is not as dangerous as bad C++ code.

BTW: deadlocks are not exploitable for RCE, and are quite easy to debug compared to data races and heap sprays.

There is a very great deal of good C++ online. Google and Microsoft are handicapped by their need to hire in huge numbers, and must take who they can get.
I don't normally want to be personal, but ncmncm you chime in with this thread each time. Can you give an example of what you yourself have written that would live up to your standards? I'm curious what type of thing you're talking about.