[jacquesm]

I've had some fun reviewing some very old code I wrote (1980's) to see what it looked like to me after such a long time of gaining experience. It's not unlike what the OP did here, it reads cleanly but I can see many issues that escaped my attention at the time. I always compared C with a very fast car: you can take some corners on two wheels but if you make a habit of that you're going to end up in a wall somewhere. That opinion has not changed.

[uecker]

I think the correct comparison is a sharp knife. It is extremely useful and while there is a risk it is fully acceptable. The idea that we should all use plastic knifes because there are often accidents with knifes is wrong and so is the idea that we use should abandon C because of memory safety. I follow computer security issues for several decades, and while I think we should have memory safety IMHO the push and arguments are completely overblown - and they are especially not worth the complexity and issues of Rust. I never was personally impacted by a security exploit caused by memory safety or know anybody in my personal vicinity who was. I know many cases where people where affected by other kinds of security issues. So I think those are what we should focus on first. And having timely security updates is a hell lot more important than memory safety, so I am not happy that Rust now makes this harder.

[jacquesm]

That's an interesting point you are making there. The most common exploits are of the human variety. Even so it is probably a good idea to minimize the chances of all kinds of exploits. One other problem - pet peeve of mine - is that instead of giving people just security updates manufacturers will happily include a whole bunch of new and 'exciting' stuff in their updates that in turn will (1) introduce new security issues and (2) will inevitably try to extract more money from the updaters. This is extremely counterproductive.

[int_19h]

The real problem with C is that it's not just a sharp knife, it's a knife with poor ergonomics that makes it more prone to cutting yourself.

The answer to that though is probably more something like Zig than something like Rust.

[DenisDolya]

Hi, are you interested in Zig? Then please check out my port of jsmn to Zig. I wanted to know if people will like it and if there are any downsides others might not. https://github.com/Ferki-git-creator/jsmn_zig

[pjmlp]

Except any good chef or butcher knows that they should be wearing protective gloves when using sharp knifes.

> Cut-resistant gloves are an essential piece of safety equipment in any kitchen.

https://www.restaurantware.com/blogs/smallwares/how-to-choos...

Where are C's gloves?

[simonask]

I’m sorry, but there is an incredible amount of hard data on this, including the number of CVEs directly attributable to memory safety bugs. This is publicly available information, and we as an industry should take it seriously.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but this cavalier attitude towards it reads like vaccine skepticism to me. It is not serious.

Programming can be inconsequential, but it can also be national security. I know which engineers I would trust with the latter, and they aren’t the kind who believe that discipline is “enough”.

[goalieca]

CVE are important but there’s also a lot of theatre there. How many are known exploitable? Most aren’t if you follow threat intel. Most of the Internet infrastructure is running c/c++ and is very safe.

[simonask]

It's fine to have a sober view of the severity, but we can hopefully agree in general that writing any program in C or C++ that faces the internet requires extreme caution.

[goalieca]

I think anything that faces the internet needs extreme caution. I've done enough pentesting myself to see that mistakes are abound and most of them are logic problems.

[uecker]

Number of CVEs is completely irrelevant. Also Google's or Microsoft's priorities are completely irrelevant. If you have reliable data from the real world, please show it to me.

[jacquesm]

So what do you propose to do?

[simonask]

I propose that we start taking the appropriate amount of professional responsibility.

That includes being honest about the actual costs of software when you don’t YOLO the details. Zero UB is table stakes now - it didn’t use to be, but we don’t live in that world anymore.

It’s totally fine to use C or whatever language for it, but you are absolutely kidding yourself if you think the cost is less than at least an order of magnitude higher than the equivalent code written in Rust, C#, or any other language that helps you avoid these bugs. Rust even lets you get there at zero performance cost, so we’re down to petty squabbles about syntax or culture - not serious.

[pjmlp]

Thankfully the new cybersecurity laws will help here, when companies map production costs to languages, the needle will keep moving away from those that tank security budgets.

[jacquesm]

I was actually hoping for far more strict enforcement but so far they're taking it relatively easy.

[jacquesm]

> I propose that we start taking the appropriate amount of professional responsibility.

I agree. For me that means: software engineering should start taking the same attitude to writing software that structural engineers bring to the table when they talk about bridges, buildings and other structures that will have people's lives depending on them. I'm not sure how we're going to make rings out of bits but we need to realize - continuously - that the price of failure is often paid in blood, or in the best case with financial loss and usually not by us. And in turn we should be enabled to impose that same ethic on management, because more often than not that's the root cause of the problem.

> That includes being honest about the actual costs of software when you don’t YOLO the details.

Does that include development cost?

Maintenance costs?

Or just secondary costs?

Why the focus on costs?

> Zero UB is table stakes now - it didn’t use to be, but we don’t live in that world anymore.

This is because 'Rust and C# exist'? Or is it because Java, Erlang, Visual Basic, Lisp etc exist?

> It’s totally fine to use C or whatever language for it, but you are absolutely kidding yourself if you think the cost is less than at least an order of magnitude higher than the equivalent code written in Rust, C#, or any other language that helps you avoid these bugs.

We were talking about responsibility first, and that goes well beyond just measuring 'cost'. The mistake in bringing cost into it is that cost is a business concept that is used to justify picking a particular technology over another. And just like security is an expense that doesn't show anything on the balance sheet if it works besides that it cost money the same goes for picking a programming language eco-system.

So I think focusing on cost is a mistake. That just allows the bookkeeper to make the call and that call will often be the wrong one.

> Rust even lets you get there at zero performance cost, so we’re down to petty squabbles about syntax or culture - not serious.

The debate goes a lot further than that. You have millions of people that are writing software every day that are not familiar with Rust. To get them to pick a managed language over what they are used to is going to take a lot of convincing.

It starts of with ethics, and I don't think it should start off with picking a favorite language. You educate, show by example and you deliver at or below the same cost that those other eco-systems do and then you slowly eat the world because your projects are delivered on-time, with provably lower real world defects and hopefully at a lower cost.

And then I really couldn't care what language was picked, in the rust world that translates into 'anything but C' because that is perceived to be the enemy somehow, which is strange because there are many alternatives to rust that are perfectly suitable, have much higher mind share already.

C is - even today - at 10x the popularity that rust is, it will take a massive amount of resources to switch those people over, and likely it will take more than one generation. In the meantime all of the C code in the world will have to be maintained, which means there is massive job security for people learning C. For people learning rust to the exclusion of learning C that situation is far worse. This needs to be solved.

These are not 'petty squabbles' about syntax or culture. They are the harsh reality of the software development world at large, which has seen massive projects deployed at scale developed with those really bad languages full of undefined behavior (well, that's at least one thing that Assembly Language has going for it, as long as the CPU does what it says in the book undefined behavior doesn't exist). People are going to point at that and say 'good enough'. And they see all those memory overflows, CVEs etc as a given, and they realize that in spite of all of those the main vector for security issues is people, and configuration mistakes not so much the software itself.

This is not ideal, obviously, but C, like any bad habit, is very hard to dislodge if your main argument is 'you should drop this tool because mine is better'. Then you need to show that your tool is better, so much better that it negates the cost to switch. And that's a very tall order, for any programming language, much more so for one that is struggling for adoption in the first place.

[simonask]

Cost is a useful metric because it reflects a number of relevant things: Time to develop, effort to maintain - yes, but also people turnover, required expertise levels, satisfaction, and so on. Whether or not you like it, you have to care about cost if you want to make rational decisions. I'm not talking about assigning a Euro/Dollar/Yuan value to each hour spent on a project, but you need a rough idea about the size of the time and energy investment you are making when starting a project.

> This is because 'Rust and C# exist'? Or is it because Java, Erlang, Visual Basic, Lisp etc exist?

Things have changed for three important reasons: (1) C/C++ compilers have evolved, and UB is significantly more catastrophic than it was in the 90s and early 00s. (2) As societies digitize, the stakes are higher than even - leaking personal data has huge legal and moral consequences, and system outages can have business-killing financial consequences. (3) There are actual, viable alternatives - GC is no longer a requirement for memory safety.

> To get them to pick a managed language over what they are used to is going to take a lot of convincing.

Perhaps you didn't mean to say so, but Rust is not a managed language (that's a .NET term referring to C#, F#, etc.).

Me and other Rust users are obviously trying to convince even more people to use the language, and that's because we are having a great time over here. It's a very pleasant language with a pleasant community and a high level of technical expertise, and it allows me to get significantly closer to living up to my own ideals. I'm not making a moral argument here, trying to say that you or anyone is a bad person for not using Rust, but I am making a moral argument saying that denying the huge cost and risk associated with developing software in C and C++ is bullshit.

> And then I really couldn't care what language was picked, in the rust world that translates into 'anything but C' because that is perceived to be the enemy somehow, which is strange because there are many alternatives to rust that are perfectly suitable, have much higher mind share already.

The point here is that, until Rust came along, you had the choice between wildly risky (but fast) C and C++ code, or completely safe (but slow) garbage collected languages with heavy runtimes and significant deployment challenges.

C is certainly not "the enemy" - I never said that, and I wouldn't. But that old world is gone. The excuse of picking risky, problem-riddled languages that we know are associated with extreme costs for reasons of performance no longer has any technical merit. There can be other reasons, but this isn't it.

> C is - even today - at 10x the popularity that rust is, it will take a massive amount of resources to switch those people over [...]

It's insane to me that anyone would limit themselves to a single language. Every competent programmer I know knows at least a handful. Why are we worried about this? I'm a decent C programmer, and a very good C++ programmer - better at both because I'm also fairly good at Rust.

> And they see all those memory overflows, CVEs etc as a given, and they realize that in spite of all of those the main vector for security issues is people, and configuration mistakes not so much the software itself.

"Pobody's nerfect." I'm sorry, I really dislike this attitude. We can't let the fact that security is hard, or that perfection is unattainable, be an excuse to deliver more crap.

> This is not ideal, obviously, but C, like any bad habit, is very hard to dislodge if your main argument is 'you should drop this tool because mine is better'

Again, that's not my argument. My argument is that you should be honest about what the actual costs, or alternatively the actual quality.