We have learned a lot since C was invented. Everything has weaknesses including C. Technical problems with C include but are not limited to:
* lack of memory safety and the resulting security issues * null pointers, Tony Hoare's billion dollar mistake * lack of import mechanism, and the resultant mess of includes
The main strengths of C are its maturity and ubiquity.
The most obvious competitor to C is Rust. That's currently less mature and less ubiquitous, of course. No tool is perfect.
Here's how server applications aren't supported: they use system calls or variants of system calls that aren't implemented. Microsoft have made sure that bash, git and nodejs all work fine. But they haven't implemented all the APIs that, for example, Oracle or Docker use. I found I could run xterm no problem but not Haskell's ghc or stack. They will probably add more features over time but it's hard to say how far they'll get or when. The project originated in the Astoria Android emulator, so the APIs that a typical Android app uses are likely to best supported.
That does sound bad. Here's how it works in the UK:
1. Touch card on device. 2. Replace in pocket.
In many cases, but not always, a phone also works (albeit using different technical standards). In London, NFC is also how you use public transport.
Or for transactions over £30 or otherwise considered risky:
1. Insert card. This doesn't take any longer than swiping the card. 2. Enter PIN. There's no significant distance to move your hand, so this is as quick as you can type 4 digits. 3. Wait for authorisation. This is imperceptible unless the retailer's using dial-up (some do though it's not very common) or there's server-side congestion (which also isn't very common). 4. Replace in pocket.
For reasons that aren't clear to me, most UK ATMs have a noticeable delay between inserting the card and letting you enter your PIN.
Given that it's kernel-mode support providing (a large subset of) the Linux kernel interface, it's not *entirely* like WINE. You're right that it's for devs though.
... Libertarianism requires knowledge to appreciate.... Communism requires none...
You're trying to imply the poster is a communist when all you know is he's not a Libertarian. It's not an either/or: most political positions are neither Libertarian nor Communism. Both Libertarian and Communism are politically extreme. In my opinion, and the opinion of many others, both lead to bad outcomes.
No wonder Nigel Farage left UKIP. Once the UKIPers find out he sold them all an absolute load of bollocks, they'll want his head.
I fear it's more likely that when things get difficult, Farage will appear again to blame europeans for the new crisis. It is highly unlikely that brexiters will decide they were misled. It might be logical but it's not human nature. And brexit is all about human nature.
... "I'm using Rust, I don't have to think about memory anymore".
Rust is a low level language that forces you to think about memory. It's like a modern C. You can see for yourself how much of the Rust manual deals with memory management. In particular this page shows how the Rust stack and heap are the same as in C: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book... . The thing Rust has over C is a type system that eliminates common classes of bug.
> That so only true if the compiler and run-time system do not have bugs.
We can be certain there are no bugs in Rusts run-time system because it doesn't have one.
It's true that the compiler needs to be correct but that's true of all compilers. Rust is a clean, modern design and the critical parts of the compiler are fairly small, so the Rust compiler's chances of generating correct code are pretty good, even compared with much more mature C compilers.
Java isn't supposed to be able to get out of its sandbox without permission, yet it's the source of many vulnerabilities. Why would we trust Rust to be any safer?
This isn't even wrong. The media component needs to be free of bugs/vulnerabilities, not execute untrusted code.
The better comparison is with C because if the media component wasn't written in Rust, it would be written in C. Memory safety is the safety-critical attribute that Rust and Java have that C lacks. This is not the same as a sandbox. Sandboxes are indeed important in browsers - Chrome and Edge/IE have them and Firefox's sandbox (Electrolysis) is under active development. Rust is a low level language comparable to C, which has an advanced type system that ensures memory safety and other important invariants. Java, by contrast, does not have an advanced type system but does have an advanced runtime system. There have been many vulnerabilities in Java's runtime and libraries, which are large and involve a significant amount of C code.
Think of Rust code as C code that's proven not have suffer certain classes of bug.
Not necessarily. The scottish plan is simply not to leave the EU when the rest of the UK does. That means they need to come out of the UK as the UK leaves.
I'm a brit and I'm aware of two terrorist knife attacks on UK soil. There are more than in the US and there may be more that I couldn't recall and/or find on Google but I'd characterise the number of terrorist knife attacks as "some" rather than "quite a few". Casualties in the murder of Lee Rigby: one. Casualties in the Leytonstone Tube stabbing: one. These are serious but casualties aren't on the scale of 7/7 or Mumbai.
Realistically, you're not going to be able to have an honest discussion about this. You will continue to suffer gun-related fatalities in a way the rest of first world does not, essentially forever. It is your fate, your doom as it were. The US is lucky in many ways but not in this.
Looks to me like the problem with OOM is the standard library. You probably want to avoid the Rust standard library when doing safety critical embedded.
GP didn't say nginx wasn't good, merely that it was newer than IIS.
You're right that apache is slow and nginx is much faster. But did you know lots of web servers are as fast as nginx? Notably, that includes IIS (no, I'm not saying you should use IIS).
What you say was true of early releases of Rust. But they removed all traces of any kind of runtime for exactly this reason. It was a breaking change but it happened quite a long time before the 1.0 release. Here's the documentation for the change: https://github.com/rust-lang/r...
Here's a blog entry on using Rust for embedded. It dates from February and uses 1.0-alpha but of course 1.0 is out now:
Congratulations on learning pointers! Welcome to the inner circle of people-who-know-pointers.
You suggested the following as if it's an either-or:
> learn pointers rather than develop ways to avoid them.
But it's not: one can learn pointers *and* develop ways to avoid them - pointers are a bit like GOTO in this respect. On the subject of learning things, have you learned Rust yet? Do you know why you should?
Computer science isn't about computers, in the same way that physics isn't about telescopes. I'll illustrate this by linking a couple of computer science papers:
Or how about watching an introductory computer science lecture from Stanford. Bob Harper introduces type theory and how to use the doctrine of computational trinitarianism to check whether you've made a significant discovery in computer science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
There's more to computing than transistors. There's more to software than mathematicians study (the second paper's a good example).
Slashdot Mirror
We have learned a lot since C was invented. Everything has weaknesses including C. Technical problems with C include but are not limited to:
* lack of memory safety and the resulting security issues
* null pointers, Tony Hoare's billion dollar mistake
* lack of import mechanism, and the resultant mess of includes
The main strengths of C are its maturity and ubiquity.
The most obvious competitor to C is Rust. That's currently less mature and less ubiquitous, of course. No tool is perfect.
Here's how server applications aren't supported: they use system calls or variants of system calls that aren't implemented. Microsoft have made sure that bash, git and nodejs all work fine. But they haven't implemented all the APIs that, for example, Oracle or Docker use. I found I could run xterm no problem but not Haskell's ghc or stack. They will probably add more features over time but it's hard to say how far they'll get or when. The project originated in the Astoria Android emulator, so the APIs that a typical Android app uses are likely to best supported.
That does sound bad. Here's how it works in the UK:
1. Touch card on device.
2. Replace in pocket.
In many cases, but not always, a phone also works (albeit using different technical standards). In London, NFC is also how you use public transport.
Or for transactions over £30 or otherwise considered risky:
1. Insert card. This doesn't take any longer than swiping the card.
2. Enter PIN. There's no significant distance to move your hand, so this is as quick as you can type 4 digits.
3. Wait for authorisation. This is imperceptible unless the retailer's using dial-up (some do though it's not very common) or there's server-side congestion (which also isn't very common).
4. Replace in pocket.
For reasons that aren't clear to me, most UK ATMs have a noticeable delay between inserting the card and letting you enter your PIN.
This bug is fixed in an update for 7, though since it's a bug in Windows Update, it's a bit of a pain. Windows 10 never had the bug.
Given that it's kernel-mode support providing (a large subset of) the Linux kernel interface, it's not *entirely* like WINE. You're right that it's for devs though.
Though it is clear it wants to be part of europe.
Rolls Royce is owned by BMW, which is not entirely british.
... Libertarianism requires knowledge to appreciate .... Communism requires none...
You're trying to imply the poster is a communist when all you know is he's not a Libertarian. It's not an either/or: most political positions are neither Libertarian nor Communism. Both Libertarian and Communism are politically extreme. In my opinion, and the opinion of many others, both lead to bad outcomes.
No wonder Nigel Farage left UKIP. Once the UKIPers find out he sold them all an absolute load of bollocks, they'll want his head.
I fear it's more likely that when things get difficult, Farage will appear again to blame europeans for the new crisis. It is highly unlikely that brexiters will decide they were misled. It might be logical but it's not human nature. And brexit is all about human nature.
... "I'm using Rust, I don't have to think about memory anymore".
Rust is a low level language that forces you to think about memory. It's like a modern C. You can see for yourself how much of the Rust manual deals with memory management. In particular this page shows how the Rust stack and heap are the same as in C: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book... . The thing Rust has over C is a type system that eliminates common classes of bug.
> That so only true if the compiler and run-time system do not have bugs.
We can be certain there are no bugs in Rusts run-time system because it doesn't have one.
It's true that the compiler needs to be correct but that's true of all compilers. Rust is a clean, modern design and the critical parts of the compiler are fairly small, so the Rust compiler's chances of generating correct code are pretty good, even compared with much more mature C compilers.
Java isn't supposed to be able to get out of its sandbox without permission, yet it's the source of many vulnerabilities. Why would we trust Rust to be any safer?
This isn't even wrong. The media component needs to be free of bugs/vulnerabilities, not execute untrusted code.
The better comparison is with C because if the media component wasn't written in Rust, it would be written in C. Memory safety is the safety-critical attribute that Rust and Java have that C lacks. This is not the same as a sandbox. Sandboxes are indeed important in browsers - Chrome and Edge/IE have them and Firefox's sandbox (Electrolysis) is under active development. Rust is a low level language comparable to C, which has an advanced type system that ensures memory safety and other important invariants. Java, by contrast, does not have an advanced type system but does have an advanced runtime system. There have been many vulnerabilities in Java's runtime and libraries, which are large and involve a significant amount of C code.
Think of Rust code as C code that's proven not have suffer certain classes of bug.
It was a choice between love and hate.
Not necessarily. The scottish plan is simply not to leave the EU when the rest of the UK does. That means they need to come out of the UK as the UK leaves.
I'm a brit and I'm aware of two terrorist knife attacks on UK soil. There are more than in the US and there may be more that I couldn't recall and/or find on Google but I'd characterise the number of terrorist knife attacks as "some" rather than "quite a few". Casualties in the murder of Lee Rigby: one. Casualties in the Leytonstone Tube stabbing: one. These are serious but casualties aren't on the scale of 7/7 or Mumbai.
Realistically, you're not going to be able to have an honest discussion about this. You will continue to suffer gun-related fatalities in a way the rest of first world does not, essentially forever. It is your fate, your doom as it were. The US is lucky in many ways but not in this.
Looks to me like the problem with OOM is the standard library. You probably want to avoid the Rust standard library when doing safety critical embedded.
https://users.rust-lang.org/t/...
GP didn't say nginx wasn't good, merely that it was newer than IIS.
You're right that apache is slow and nginx is much faster. But did you know lots of web servers are as fast as nginx? Notably, that includes IIS (no, I'm not saying you should use IIS).
Looks like GP touched a nerve.
What you say was true of early releases of Rust. But they removed all traces of any kind of runtime for exactly this reason. It was a breaking change but it happened quite a long time before the 1.0 release. Here's the documentation for the change: https://github.com/rust-lang/r...
Here's a blog entry on using Rust for embedded. It dates from February and uses 1.0-alpha but of course 1.0 is out now:
http://spin.atomicobject.com/2...
In these days of LLVM, the portability story is good, even relative to C. No C portability gotchas.
Congratulations on learning pointers! Welcome to the inner circle of people-who-know-pointers.
You suggested the following as if it's an either-or:
> learn pointers rather than develop ways to avoid them.
But it's not: one can learn pointers *and* develop ways to avoid them - pointers are a bit like GOTO in this respect. On the subject of learning things, have you learned Rust yet? Do you know why you should?
Computer science isn't about computers, in the same way that physics isn't about telescopes. I'll illustrate this by linking a couple of computer science papers:
* The Derivative of a Regular Type is its Type of One-Hole Contexts: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/v...
* This paper give a name and applications to something maths only calls "strong lax monoidal functors": http://staff.city.ac.uk/~ross/...
Or how about watching an introductory computer science lecture from Stanford. Bob Harper introduces type theory and how to use the doctrine of computational trinitarianism to check whether you've made a significant discovery in computer science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
There's more to computing than transistors. There's more to software than mathematicians study (the second paper's a good example).
As opposed to shooting them in the back?
no.
Sounds almost like you're asking for this: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...
But that can't be right!