[Malidir]

Would Rust and it's memory safety stuff have prevented this?

[Squeeze2664]

In some sense, yes. Use-after-free is impossible in safe Rust (if you don't use the unsafe keyword)

[ramon156]

I'd argue that this is a good example of how rust could've prevented use-after-free, but y'know, I'd obviously be glazing.

[wslh]

It's not as easy as everyone might think. You could take a look at this thread titled 'My big problem with Rust is too much "unsafe" code' [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41792477

[xwolfi]

Java too !

[yencabulator]

The difference being that no one in their right mind is thinking of rewriting a browser in Java to also make it faster, while that's exactly what Servo/Stylo etc are all about.

[bubblesnort]

And don't forget Ada.

[Yoric]

And OCaml or Haskell :)

[sph]

Why go fancy? Even Python saves you from use-after-free.

[Yoric]

Come on, I had to outbid Ada somehow :)

For what it's worth, Python was also considered at some point for use in the Firefox codebase. I don't remember the rationale for not adopting it, but I think the idea was "we all like Python, but we already have one messy language (JavaScript), let's not make it two".

[jeltz]

Brainfuck too!