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C with Safety - Cyclone

Posted by michael on from the whirling-away-bugs dept.

Paul Smith writes: "New Scientist is carrying a story about a redesigned version of the programming language C called Cyclone from AT&T labs. "The Cyclone compiler identifies segments of code that could eventually cause such problems using a "type-checking engine". This does not just look for specific strings of code, but analyses the code's purpose and singles out conflicts known to be potentially dangerous.""

5 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Just what I need... by mshomphe · · Score: 5, Funny

    buggy code to tell me when my code is buggy.

    --
    She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.
  2. I am against this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    C is *supposed* to be dangerous, damnit.

  3. No No No by VFVTHUNTER · · Score: 5, Funny

    We had C, then C++, then C#. So shouldn't the next logical step be C followed by three vertical lines and three horizontal lines (that'd be C-tic-tac-toe)?

  4. "C with safety," or C with trigger locks? by Tsar · · Score: 5, Funny
    I like the notion of building protection against common, insidious errors, but why did they have to create a new language to accomplish it? I didn't quite understand that point.

    And isn't a cyclone an infinite loop?
    "Our ultimate goal is to have something as humongous as the Linux operating system built in Cyclone," says Morrisett.
    You have to like a scientist who uses the word humongous.
  5. Vision of the future by Pemdas · · Score: 4, Funny
    The Cyclone compiler will rewrite the code or suggest fixes to avoid potential bugs. Even if a bug still occurs, the compiled system will lead the program to halt safely, not crash.

    Am I the only one to whom this sounds like potentially a really bad idea? I mean, think about it, coding along one day:

    #include

    int main() {
    printf("He

    At this point, small, cute cartoon versions of Kernighan and Ritchie pop onto the screen and say "It looks like you're writing a Hello World program! Click here to check this program for bugs automatically..."

    I'm just shuddering at the thought...