Subj : Re: US White House urges devs to dump C and C++
To   : Digital Man
From : tenser
Date : Fri Mar 01 2024 08:05 am

On 28 Feb 2024 at 09:50p, Digital Man pondered and said...
 
 DM>   Re: US White House urges devs to dump C and C++
 DM>   By: Nightfox to Ogg on Wed Feb 28 2024 08:31 pm
 DM> 
 DM>  >   Re: US White House urges devs to dump C and C++
 DM>  >   By: Ogg to Nightfox on Wed Feb 28 2024 07:06 pm
 DM>  >
 DM>  >  N>> I saw this article today:
 DM>  >  N>> https://shorturl.at/KMZ07
 DM>  >
 DM>  >  Og> Is the WH a good source for programming advice?   :|
 DM>  >
 DM>  > I was thinking that as well..  I wonder if they talked to anyone before
 DM>  > suggesting developers drop C and C++.
 DM> 
 DM> I don't doubt it.

Indeed, they did.  There was an extensive public commentary
period wherein a number of people from industry, academia,
and government weighed in.

The WH press release is just that: a press release.  The actual
text is linked, but is rather different.  Effectively, the White
House is just putting out a press release to raise awareness of
efforts from across the US government.

 DM> Managed languages have been big in security and
 DM> enterprise app development, anywhere performance or hardware-access
 DM> isn't the paramount priority, for a long time now. It's not to say that
 DM> you can't have vulnerabilites in managed software (they happen all the
 DM> time), they're just a different class of vulnerabilities that are
 DM> generally easier to find and defend against or fix than the memory
 DM> issues that plague C and C++ code bases.

+1e6

 DM> It's honestly not bad advice for most projects (e.g. I don't think Apple
 DM> accepts apps written in C or C++ in its app store). But keep in mind,
 DM> Rust supports writing memory-unsafe code too. It's default mode is
 DM> memory-safe, but it's still subvertable. So Rust might not be the
 DM> cure-all they think it is. -- 

In the various materials they link to, Rust is just one option
they mention.  Ada SPARK, C#, Java, Python, Rust and Go are all
listed across the set of publications, as well as non-language
techniques (like formal methods and verification).  Interestingly,
they mention Rust as being explicitly unproven in space
applications, while C that's been formally verified is well proven.

The thing about Rust unsafety is, however, a bit of a red herring.
Rust _does_ give you the ability to write memory-unsafe code, but
you have to go out of your way to do so (e.g., via explicit use of
`unsafe` or other weird shenanigans).  But so do most managed
programming languages (e.g., Java with JNI etc).  If one writes
Rust using the safe subset, you get memory safety and data race
freedom.  Now, async cancel safety, that's another thing entirely....

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