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Bill Joy's Takes on C#

f00zbll writes: "Cnet is running an article by Bill Joy on security and how it relates to C# and Microsoft at large. BJ quotes verbatim: 'C# provides the ability to write unsafe code. In unsafe code it is possible to declare and operate on pointers, to perform conversions between pointers and integral types, to take the address of variables, and so forth.'"

8 of 561 comments (clear)

  1. Is this a shock? by soulhuntre · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    "Bill Joy, co-founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, is the principal designer of the Berkeley version of the Unix operating system (BSD) and a co-author of "The Java Language Specification."

    So he doesn't like .NET. What a shock. he's usually so balanced and objective.

    Ah well, when he gets stomped flat again he can always sue, that seems to be sun's primary strategy these days.

    --
    --> Fight tyranny and repression.... read /. at -1!
  2. Bill Joy is a Retard! by Bastard0 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    This is the same guy that gave key note speeches at various trade shows and symposiums about how machines will soon be smarter than people and will take over the world and kill all of us. He is a lunatic and should be regarded as such. He is clearly reaching pretty far with his argument. Instead of showing any kind of technical example of anything or any real world situation he just speculates based on a large number of assumptions.

  3. The Emperor still has no clothes... by the_skywise · · Score: 2, Flamebait

    What kind of syntatical gobbeldy-gook is this!?!

    If I put the keyword UNSAFE in front of any line of code, C# generates a flag (similar to CONST in C/C++), that sends the keyword all the way down to the code emitter which sets a flag in the .EXE header that states "the unsafe flag was set in the code, so don't run it if you don't run "unsafe" code...

    There's NOTHING, NADA, ZIP in this system that makes the code in this program "safe". All you're REALLY saying is "MICROSOFT WARRANTS THAT THIS CODE HAS NO POINTERS! (TM)"

    That's what Joy is saying... When Microsoft has to state in their documentation "The keyword UNSAFE, marks code that is UNSAFE to run, because the code being run would be UNSAFE when it is run. This actually makes the code SAFE." There's something VERY WRONG here...

    Stop buying the Orwellian newspeak... THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!

  4. Re:So what? by mtrupe · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    That is an idiotic analogy. We are talking about tools.

    Here is a better analogy-
    Sears makes vice grips, which can perform a number of tasks, but you probably should not clamp them down on your penis.

  5. Re:Sun shouldn't be complacent by Zico · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    When Ted Turner made his announcement, he said that he was donating 1 billion dollars. The fine print was the he was donating that 1 billion dollars over 10 years. Gates has given 24 billion out of his 67 billion. Have you given over a third of your money to charity? Have you even given a tenth of your money to charity?

  6. Re:one question? by Zico · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    mappoint.msn.com is pretty useful for me, and is made from ASP.NET code in C#.

  7. Re:Two Kettles Arguing over whos Blacker by Zico · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Java's constraints don't make it more secure than C#, but they do make it easier to write robust code.


    I've gotta ask for some explanation of this statement. Just because C# gives programmers the option of using things like pointers, doesn't make it any more difficult to write robust code. If some Java programmer were wanting to write a program in C#, there's absolutely nothing about it that would make him feel like he should start using pointers all of a sudden. What strikes me as the silliest thing about the article is that the Java platform lets you write the same type of "unsafe" code as C#, using JNI — it seems like Joy thinks the big sin is that the programmer can actually use his preferred language (C#) to do it, whereas with JNI you have the headache of having to write the native bits in a whole different language than Java. Anyway, because Microsoft has come up with a better language than Java, I personally find that its simplicity (like with Properties), makes code development much easier than with Java. And I'm just talking about regular Java-like, non-unsafe code.

  8. Re:Trustworthy Code by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Oooooh, Java is safe! You can't hurt yourself! Just like a nice rubber room! See? You can run round bouncing off the nice safe walls and still be safe and happy. Oh so happy.

    Give me the power! Give me the electricity crackling through my fingers that is C!

    World Shakin' !

    graspee