On Tuesday, 14 July 2015 at 07:43:27 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
On Tuesday, 14 July 2015 at 03:35:08 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/87749
Safety is one of the more important things that D offers over
C++, even though people keep saying C++11/14 makes D
unimportant.
Uhm, no. The linked page concludes that security-oriented
software should be written in languages that trap on integer
overflow by default.
D is not better off by having modulo-arithmetics, that means
you cannot even catch overflow related issues by semantic
analysis, since overflow does not exist. There are C-like
languages that ensures that overflow is not possible at compile
time (by putting limits on loop iterations and doing heavy duty
proofs).
The article concludes: "There are many more modern and much safer
languages that either eliminate the UB entirely through language
design (e.g. using a garbage collector to eliminate an entire
class of memory safety issues, completely disallowing pointer
casts to enable TBAA safely, etc), or by intentionally spending a
bit of performance to provide a safe and correct programming
model (e.g. by guaranteeing that integers will trap if they
overflow). My hope is that the industry will eventually move to
better systems programming languages, but that will take a very
very long time..."
__e.g. using a garbage collector to eliminate an entire class of
memory safety issues__
Now one may say that this isn't all he was saying, that the GC in
D can be improved, that D could be safer, and so on. But it's
hardly fair to suggest the original poster is not right about one
of the advantages of D vs C and C++. Or at least you ought to
make that argument rather than just pick on one fragment of the
linked piece, without considering the overall point.
