this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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Programmer Humor

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Evolution of C (programming.dev)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by JPDev@programming.dev to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[โ€“] ssm@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

If there was a simpler way to make C memory-safe, it would have been done decades ago.

We've had compile time sanitizers (-fsanitize=blah in gcc/clang) and runtime sanitizers (valgrind) for ages. I don't know how they stack up against rust's compile time sanitizers, but it's something.

[โ€“] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

About how an Excel spreadsheet with no formulas stacks up against a corporate accounting suite. Valgrind is how you find the bleeding once you inevitably introduce a memory bug. I don't understand all the fsanitize options, but I'm guessing they aren't a blanket solution, exactly because memory bugs have still been inevitable.

This thread is making me wonder how many people actually understand what Rust does. It rigorously prevents any form of memory error at all in normal code, and unsafe blocks, where needed, tend to be tiny. It makes C segmentation faults look just as goofy as JavaScript type errors.