So a question.

I remember a news article recently urging all people to use python and rust and the like because of memory safety.....

somewhere way back whenever this bs was.

so a few times now I had chatgpt generate me a status window script because it was a one use thing just so I could see how far along a near 500 gb download was to finished.

and it repeatedly caused my machine to freeze from an unknown source of memory leakage as it gradually built up a ridiculous amount of overhead at a rate much faster than it should jhave from the few references and bits of scalar data that it was accumulating.

I know its means something else...

but its kind of funny just the same :P
my system crashed from what is supposed to be a managed language right ? exceptions and stack traces etc ?

What‘s the question?

I believe you refer to when the NSA recommended use of certain languages. The full list, if I recall, was Go, Rust, C#, Swift, Java, Ruby, Python, and Delphi.

However, note that the core Python implementation is still written in C, that is, CPython. (https://github.com/python/cpython)

Perhaps the NSA meant RustPython, then? ;> (https://github.com/RustPython/...)

Either way, most useful code is still written in C, so...

@Liebranca What are you saying? That a language can‘t be safe if it's written in another language which is not safe?
That's obviously wrong.

I am kinda okay with the ChatGPT generation of programmers avoiding C/C++. Will short term make my skills in more demand. Long term who knows.

@Lensflare a language is not unsafe, the programmer is.

@retoor yes and no. It is so easy to fuck stuff up and not detect it in C++. It has better more modern paradigms for sure. But it requires more training of the programmer. I also have seen an absolute lack explicit of mentorship in places I have worked. That doesn't help.

People I worked with thought deleting a pointer set it back to null automatically. They had logic checking for null with no explicit delete/free. Which could go undetected for quite a while.

@retoor honestly I‘m tired of having to explain what it means for a language to be safe. No offense :)

@Lensflare isn't the main driver to produce statistically better code? We have a good amount of statistics now on the types of failures found in code.

I don't know where it falls in statistics, but one example is comparisons. In C/C++ being able to do an assignment in a comparison is valid:

if(value = 10) {...}

Obviously we have things to check for this now, but it is still possible. At the same time I see C# preventing things like this by having explicit comparisons. I was kind of shocked when I couldn't do this in C#:

// not sure on syntax, doh

int value = 10;

if(value) {...}

C# says nope and requires this:

if(value == something) {...}

This enforces a boolean. It should also prevent assignments in comparisons.

So it can help prevent sketchy code from compromising security in a codebase as well. I know there was an explicit attempt to inject a security hole in the linux kernel using an assignment in a comparison. But they caught it.

@Demolishun yes that‘s some of the examples of safety features.

@Lensflare everyone knows, they're messing with ya.

@Demolishun fun fact, I've vibe coded quite a bit and for some reason C seems one of the best languages and gpt is very good in defensive programming. Who knows, who knows, the future vibe + C? C, the choice of language for AI? AI maybe likes exact the same amount of precision to code. I mean, what if gpt contains all the savety bars and applies it while writing C making it not that unsafe at all anymore? Ever thought about that?

@retoor that is interesting.

@Demolishun download and execute this on a X86 Linux (debian?) machine: https://retoor.molodetz.nl/api/...

And type `Create me a C project that does a http connection to devrant.com and displays me the result`. You'll see it will do fine. If it doesn't create a make file directly, ask for it. It should include libcurl for compilation. AFtehr that, ask it to run make, it will auto vibe / fix your compile errors.

Since i use this tool, no compile error is in my way anymore.

** It will use GPT3.5 as backend, it has my limited API key built in for demonstration purposes but it will work fine.

@Herpesflare I'd call your ability for reasoning a turd on kerosene, but that would imply you posses of some form of sapience, which is evidently untrue.

@Lensflare in practice you're right. What about formally / mathematically? Can you reach 100% with an unsafe language?

So thinking about this. I have the Godot engine that I use. It is written in C++. But most of the coding done in the engine be game devs in done in Gdscript and C#. So this means that the bulk of dev work done in the game will be potentially safer than writing addons in C++. This is kind of a good mix for the current market IMO. Of course sometimes you need to do C++, but this will be limited.

@ANTIASYLUMIST 100% of what?

@Liebranca caught talking about stuff that you don‘t have the slightest clue about and then throwing insults…

You are an idiot and a disgusting character.

@Herpesflare Disgusting, hmm? You compared religion to nazism, then played dumb when reminded that 'religion' includes judaism.

I expected you to have at *least* sufficient mental capacity not to talk to me anymore after I explicitly requested it, yet it appears you can't even do that. What else do you expect but hostility?

But if you _must_ know why you're wrong: the point of 'safe' is you don't have to [trust] that the programmer didn't miss anything as the language itself provides the [guarantee] that they didn't mess up. That's the entire point.

I can write safe code in assembly. Do you want to take my word for it, or have to read it to make sure I can be trusted, or would you rather know that I'm telling true the moment it successfully compiles? Then there you have it.

Your flimsy nuts are free for me to crush and grind into dust; you are below the dirt beneath the sole of my shoe.

Nothing further.

@Liebranca man, you are so full of hate…

You clearly said indirectly that Python can not be safe because it’s written in C.
Do you want to deny it?

Your rambling as a distraction doesn’t work on me.

On the other unrelated thing:
Yes, I did compare religion to nazism. And then you took my comment and replaced the word religion with judaism to prove some point. Probably that judaism is the opposite of nazism? I don‘t care. That‘s irrelevant.
Polar opposites can share some characteristics, that‘s not a contradiction.

The nazis had a slogan "God is with us and we with him!". How is that for a hint that nazis and religion have at least something in common?
Just telling you to show that your logic of "judaism is a religion and opposite to nazi so nazism and religion can have nothing in common" doesn’t work.

@Herpesflare You insist?

The disgusting part is you fail to realize how your argument is a prejudice-based call for persecution and erradication of every religious group; watching you try to defend such an atrocious stance by comparing jews to nazis is frankly more embarrassing than amusing.

And you then speak of hatred; O, LORD, spare me!

As for Python, do we automatically get any guarantee that a C implementation of Python is memory safe when compiling it? Not with standard C, and not with a standard compiler.

We may then want to argue that we don't really get this with a Rust implementation either, which would actually be more sensible, as a more robust compiler doesn't fully solve programmer carelessness, if only it were that simple.

But do we do get a fair better guarantee with a Rust implementation? Yes. So we may more confidently call that 'safe', long as we agree that we are using a VERY restricted definition of 'safety'.

Anything else? If no, then block me.

@Liebranca

> The disgusting part is you fail to realize how your argument is a prejudice-based call for persecution and erradication of every religious group; watching you try to defend such an atrocious stance by comparing jews to nazis is frankly more embarrassing than amusing.

You understand nothing. I'm not comparing jews to nazis. I don‘t know how I can make this clear to you and I think it might be impossible.

Same with the python/c thing. You don‘t know what you are talking about and your attempts to talk yourself out of it are pathetic.

You still going with that Herpesflare thing?
How very funny. 🙄

Anyway, I won’t engage in this childish conversation any longer.
Grow up.

@Herpesflare Mm-hmm.

You mad; go take a shit. And keep your bitch ass from _starting_ the conversation next time: I *told* you not to talk to me again, so maybe take the hint.

Scum.