[pjmlp]

> There will always be a need for C and C++ in device drivers, microcontrollers, etc. But there's no compelling reason why SSL implementations in 2014 should use languages designed to run on mainframes in 1973.

Except that safer systems programming languages are older than C with bounds checking by default, having compilers that allowed to disable them if really really required[1]:

Algol (1960)

PL/I (1964)

Modula-2 (1978)

Mesa (1979)

Even VAX, B6500 and 68000 assembly have support for doing bounds checking.

[1] Not the first version of Algol though, as according to Hoare Turing Award speech, customers didn't want unsafe features:

<quote> A consequence of this principle is that every occurrence of every subscript of every subscripted variable was on every occasion checked at run time against both the upper and the lower declared bounds of the array. Many years later we asked our customers whether they wished us to provide an option to switch off these checks in the interest of efficiency on production runs. Unanimously, they urged us not to—they already knew how frequently subscript errors occur on production runs where failure to detect them could be disastrous. I note with fear and horror that even in 1980, language designers and users have not learned this lesson. In any respectable branch of engineering, failure to observe such elementary precautions would have long been against the law. </quote>