[survivedurcode]

Continuing to use a memory-unsafe language that has no recourse for safety and is full of footguns and is frankly irresponsible for the software profession. God help us all.

By the way, the US government did the profession no favors by including C++ as a memory-unsafe language. It is possible to write memory-safe C++, safe array dereferencing C++. But it’s not obvious how to do it. Herb Sutter is working on it with CppFront. The point stands that C++ can be memory-safe code. If you make a mistake, you might write some unsafe code in C++. But you can fix that mistake and learn to avoid it.

When you write C, you are in the bad luck shitter. You have no choice. You will write memory—unsafe code and hope you don’t fuck it up. You will hope that a refactor of your code doesn’t fuck it up.

Ah, C, so simple! You, only you, are responsible for handling memory safely. Don’t fuck it up, cadet. (Don’t leave it all to computers like a C++ developer would.)

Put C in the bin, where it belongs.

[dxuh]

You can't just put a language in the bin that has been used for 50 years and that a huge percentage the present day software infrastructure is built on.

I see comments like yours everywhere all the time and I seriously think you have a very unhealthy emotional relationship with this topic. You should not have that much hate in your heart for a programming language that has served us very well for many decades and still continues to do so. Even if C was literally all bad (which imho isn't even possible), you shouldn't be that angry at it.

[survivedurcode]

When you write C++, you can allocate memory all day long and write ZERO delete statements. That is possible, I’ve been writing C++ like that since 1998 (Visual C++ 5.0 and lcc). Can you imagine allocating memory and never risk a premature or a forgotten delete? It is not possible in C. You can call it opinion, but I see fact. That makes C all that bad.

When I say put it in the bin, I don’t mean that good software hasn’t been written already with it, or can’t be written with it. But you should stop using it given the earliest opportunity. When given the ability to write object-oriented software, clever engineers with too much time add insane complexity justified by unproven hypotheticals. Believe me, I know very well why people shy away from C++ like a trauma response. Overly-engineered/overly-abstracted complexity, incomprehensible template syntax, inadequate standard library, indecipherable error messages, C++ has its warts. But it is possible to write memory-safe software in C++, and it is not in C (unless we are talking about little code toys!). My answer is that you don’t have to write complicated garbage in C++. Keep it simple like you are writing C. Add C++ features only to get safety. Add polymorphism only when it solves a problem. Never write an abstract class ahead of time. Never write a class ahead of time.

Downvote me all day long. Call me angry. When billions of dollars are lost because someone, in our modern age, decided to write new software in C, or continue to develop software in C instead of switching to a mixed C++/C codebase with an intent to phase out new development in C.

It’s hard not to get angry when modern software is written with avoidable CVEs in 2020’s. Use after free, buffer overflows, are you kidding me? These problems should have been relics in 2010+, but here we are.

[fjfaase]

There are still applications (especially with embedded devices) where you do not dynamically allocate memory or might not even use pointers at all.

[uecker]

There good tools that help improving memory safety in C and I do not think Rust is a good language. Of course, the worst about Rust are its fans.

[purple-leafy]

Skill issue

[pornel]

It's been a skill issue for 40 years. How long are we going to continue searching for those programmers who don't make mistakes?