[xena]

I have a longer nuanced post to write out at some point about my feelings here, but here's the cliff's notes:

We should not be developing new projects in C, and we should make it politically hard to make new projects written in C in distribution repositories. C is going to stay around for a long time and that's okay, but there are so many inherent problems of its design and implementation that make it unsuited for unsupervised use. I wish that we didn't have to make such hard-line stances about this, but people have continuously proven that this tool is unsuitable for modern development and it's only going to get worse as time goes on.

[maeln]

> We should not be developing new projects in C

I would give at least embedded development a pass, since you rarely do have a choice there

[pjc50]

It's difficult, because "embedded not networked" is an environment where security risks are low, but "embedded networked" is a really nasty environment of haunted routers and abandoned IoT devices.

Is it acceptable to risk buffer overruns on the HTTP server running on an insulin pump?

[p_l]

Mostly because you often get shipped half-broken pile of C-based SDK as your blessed environment.

Not because there's no other options (and long before Rust had its name coined)

[xena]

Well, yes. I'm more focusing on user space applications here. This is why that nuance post would have to be so long. People here would probably misconstrue it to be that I want to "kill C" though. That's part of the reason why I haven't written it yet lol

[selfmodruntime]

I agree. I regularly use Rust on embedded devices and what many advocates like to leave out is that you're just using regular old C under the hood anyway. It's bindings all the way down.

[immibis]

If your distribution refuses to package useful free software, I'll use another distribution. I think this is true for most people.