Re: Heartbleed

[Jeffrey Carter <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org>]

On 04/18/2014 11:34 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>
> I agree with both of you, but the fact remains those same people are
> writing the critical/common libraries used in a wide range of software
> and hardware products.

Precisely. If civil engineering were done like software engineering, we'd have 
construction workers designing bridges and deciding what materials to use to 
build them. We don't allow that for our physical infrastructure, and we 
shouldn't allow it for the infrastructure that supports most of our commerce. 
Until we get to that point there will be no improvement in the situation, no 
matter what language you design.

> So how about a language which doesn't have all the software engineering
> requirements Ada does, but still comes with some type safety, has
> a level of functionality comparable to C, uses a syntax which makes
> it far less likely for people to make silly syntax related mistakes and
> runs on far more platforms than Ada compilers do ?

Unless it has all the failings of C, coders will continue to use C. To coders, 
those failings are desirable qualities.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"C++ is vast and dangerous, a sort of Mordor of
programming languages."
Jason R. Fruit
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