[sramsay]

> Everyone may pick their language based on their aesthetic preference and attraction to certain features, but we should avoid sweeping statements about software correctness and the best means to achieve it. Once there are costs involved (and all languages that prevent certain classes of bugs exact some cost) the cost/benefit calculus becomes very complex, with lots of variables. Practical software correctness is an extremely complicated topic, and it's rare we can make sweeping universal statements.

Thank you. I feel like this perspective is forever being lost in these discussions -- as if gaining the highest possible level of assurance with respect to security in a critical system were a simple matter of choosing a "safe language" or flipping some switch. Or conversely, avoiding languages that are "unsafe."

It is never this simple. Never. And when engineers start talking this way in particular circumstances, I begin to wonder if they really understand the problem at hand.