Biden administration seems oblivious of the strengths of contemporary C++ and the efforts to provide strong safety guarantees, Bjarne Stroustrup said.
  • zerofk@lemm.ee
    0·
    8 months ago

    Honestly his defence is rather weak. “It’s been improving and there are ways to use it safely.”

    That is not to say I agree with the administration’s statement. Not only is secure code only one aspect among a myriad to consider when choosing a language, using a “safer” language does not necessarily lead to more secure code.

    • lysdexic@programming.devOPMEnglish
      01·
      8 months ago

      Honestly his defence is rather weak. “It’s been improving and there are ways to use it safely.”

      I think it’s a very good and clear point to make.

      Some programming languages are blindly deemed “safe” in spite of supporting unsafe memory management strategies, and somehow not enforcing those rules does not render them unsafe.

      Why is this logic not applied to C++?

      • arendjr@programming.dev
        1·
        8 months ago

        Some programming languages are blindly deemed “safe” in spite of supporting unsafe memory management strategies, and somehow not enforcing those rules does not render them unsafe.

        You’re applying a strawman argument here, because nobody is blindly deeming any languages as safe. But they are recognizing some languages as safer than others. Safety isn’t a binary switch, and most people recognize that. Most people also recognize that using tools that make it harder to achieve safety, does, in fact, make it harder to achieve safety. And thus, if safety is important, avoiding those tools makes perfect sense.