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altrego99 | 7 years ago

Agree that this is a problem (if the programmer is not careful).

But serious question, why even bother with this one fix?

The only reason for the fix is so to make it more difficult to make errors.

Fix arrays, then you would fix null pointer, then you might add objects, templating/generics to support a good collections library, rtti, and before you know it you are creating another one of c++, D, go, java. And we already have those.

C paved the way. Why not let it be the end of it?

discuss

order

WalterBright|7 years ago

Because buffer overflows are probably the number 1 security bug in C programs.

ahmedalsudani|7 years ago

I was wondering why you were championing this idea and agreeing with the posted link in almost every way. Then I went back to the link and figured it out :)

P.S. thank you for everything you have done with D. I read in another HN thread about Better C, and it convinced me that D is the language I should be investing my time in learning and using.

pjmlp|7 years ago

Paved the way for what? Mainstream security exploits?

There were OSes being written in better languages outside Bell Labs, had it been allowed to sell UNIX instead of giving it away for a symbolic price to universities, and the historical outcome would have been completely different.