Posts by that one in the corner 5493 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Nov 2021
TFA > It does, however, try to make up for this with a selection of benchmarks that put Musk's AI platform ahead of the competition.
TFA> It goes without saying that a hefty pinch of salt is required when looking at any benchmarks produced in the tech industry – not just the AI ones.
Get the feeling that El Reg is not taken in?
Careful there.
If you tell them about the IOCCC they're only going to use it as a rod to beat us[1]!
Quick - we must start up the IORCC to demonstrate the joys of Rust!
[1] Yes, *we* know it is all done in humour, but, well, look at the problems that occur because the cosmologists decided to keep the name "Big Bang" as a joke on Fred Hoyle.
> COBOL was one of the many languages supposed to be used my non-programmers
I'd qualify that simply by pointing out that, at the time, "programmers" were far and few between, heads deep in assembler. The "non-programmers" were - anyone else who wanted to make the computer do their bidding but not get involved in the icky bits.
From that perspective, FORTRAN was for "non-programmers" (i.e. people whose main job title was "scientist", "engineer", a few "mathematicians" etc) who happened to want to make the machine do all their Mathematical Formulas for them.
> their productivity was considered more important than program execution speed
And we see that in every programming language since: yes, even C[1] gives you[2] more productivity than assembler, at the cost of speed (and size).
> and will probably still be with us in another couple of centuries
Yes. We'll keep on trying to make the optimising compilers make the code smaller and faster, but that is basically the entire point of all of the programming languares.
[1] hopefully
[2] well, for most of us mortals who don't have the x86-64 registers floating before our eyes
> COBOL is that it wasn’t designed by academic computer scientists
Grace Hopper was a computer scientist.
At the risk of quoting Wikipedia "Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the FLOW-MATIC programming language and COBOL".
> focused on business applications, something the academics weren’t interested in
Pick a subject, any subject, and you can find an academic interested in it (if not, that is just because there aren't enough academics around and they're all busy on something else). Even an area like "A study in the use of social media influencers as an insult in tech-oriented fora" could get somebody a couple of papers and a quick thesis.
> given the social environment of the day, I would not be surprised if part of it was sexism given the leading role women played in its initial development
Sorry, what? What was caused by sexism? The fact that COBOL *was* taken up by its intended audience? Or do you think that its adoption was artificially slowed by all those manly FORTRAN programmers barging their way into banks and ripping up the COBOL manuals? Or was Hopper trying to get girly lowercase keywords intot the language? Nope, sorry, you're going to have to expand on that one before I have any idea what it was referring to.[1]
> COBOL is derided today, because the bias has been institutionalised by those who only pay attention to social media influencers.
Cor. So that means when I was being taught (and - briefly, thank the FSM - using) COBOL back in the 1980s we were *really* ahead of the curve in deriding it, especially its more - interesting - features!
[1] Not saying that there wasn't sexism in 1959, just - what effect are you referring to?
Well, I suppose it is always good to have rant, although I do think you might want to tighten up your focus.
> You got into programming knowing that it was a moving target, that change would come to you constantly and that one of the requirements of the industry was constant study and updating of skills
True. Although I'd represent it as something that has constant additions (and, yes, this does mean that I look upon a "change" - where we've lost the previous rather than just had a new option addded - with suspicion, because I've tried to make things have a decent long service life and be capable of holding up for, say, a 25 year life as a part of a large and expensive piece of machinery).
> people intrinsically involved in one of the the cutting edge of social endeavours
Whoooah there, Nelly. I never got into this to be part of any "social endeavours"; I'm not trying to "overturn the world" or "create a new paradigm" and I don't personally know anyone who was! It was a fun job to do, always lots of new stuff to learn, problems to solve and you got the pleasure of building things that Users, well, use. Ok, some of the Users were...
> I am constantly amazed at how change resistant individuals have become.
> are personally resistant to change when said change means they must change.
But then you mix up changes that are clearly just marketing and have removed functionality (Windows buttons - and the taskbar, grr), changes that were done against expressed wishes of users (GNOME were told beforehand), changes that have genuine technical concerns being expressed (replacing init - ok, there is also a lot of politicing going on there).
And you even mix up complaints from the techies, the ones that actually have to deal with the ugly bits, with reviewer playing marketing wank (the cell 'phones bit).
> (long comment about C which anyone who uses C already knows - it came from the 1970s, lots of much bigger machines exist now - hey, bigger machines existed in the 1970s than the ones that C targeted)
And totally ignoring that many, many (have I said "many"?) systems are written NOT in C - the vast majority, in fact. Web site creators - do they write in C? Building a new database - are you using SQL or trying to do it in C? Text processing systems (mailing lists, documentation aggregation) - are you using C or are you using, oh, LaTeX or a Markdown processor or Word?
> So, use the best modern tools you have available
Yup. I and those I've worked with have done just that. As do all the people doing the jobs I referenced above.
Trouble is, many (frankly, probably all) of the things that you hear being shouted about are not necessarily the best tools - they may be the best *marketed* tools instead! But we (in my Corner) have to be sure they are going to pass the test of time - and that they are clearly designed with the intent of longevity![1] Or we'll be piling up even more problems for ourselves.
Oh, and strangely enough (!) there are still situations where C (and we'll lump "old fashioned" C++ in here as well) still is the best, stable, modern solution: all those boring little embedded systems that you probably don't even notice. Hopefully "more safe" options will occur (the MCUs are big enough now to run Python - but you can save on the BOM by using a smaller device...) but we need that to have stabilty and longevity.
> when said change means they must change.
(Back to this again): for an awful lot of people, who is *paying* for them to change? Is *anyone* paying for the change?
[1] Are you supposed, on day 1, to rely on the presence of a server "somewhere on the 'Net", in order to pull in modules just to make "Hello World" work? Or is the default install totally self-contained, can be put into Escrow for 10, 20 years and still work?[2]
[2] Sorry, sorry, don't get into my own rant, or I'll be going on about throwaway code and the problems/waste that causes.
> Memory based bug or not?
The explanation referenced by TFA shows that the answer to your question is:
NOT!
(Well, assuming by "Memory based bug" you meant buffer overflow or the like, as is all the rage at the moment; the problem is in the logic of setting variables that are used as success/failure return values, and as those variables are, indeed, in memory (in fact, on the stack!) then you could push the definition to breaking point and say "the error occurs in setting a value in memory"!)
> The kernel was still cooperative...: 32-bit pre-emptive wasn't possible on most of the hardware that was being sold at the time.
The minimum spec for '95 was a 386DX and 4MiB of RAM: if you had '05, it was running 32-bit, pre-emptive. The 386 had been available since 1985 and overtaken the 286 by appoximately 1991; a lot of machines were already using it for Win32s under the current Win 3.11. The 486 had been available (ok, "available") since 1989. By the release of Win'95, both 386 and 486 were available from multiple suppliers: Intel (!), AMD, Cyrix, Texas.
Older 286 boxes were still in use, but the machines that were sold at the time were able to run 32-bit.
> and crashes were frequent
Well, yes; it was 1995, computers crashed. Not helped by the number of software authors who hadn't even been using Win32s to get ahead of the game creating 32-bit exes :-(
> It wasn't until NT was "slimmed down" and made less pre-emptive and rebadged as NT
Um, I presume you meant "rebadged as XP" in which case, yes, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who didn't find XP more robust than '95 and '98. Although nothing (well, money) was stopping anyone from running NT 3.1 as soon as that was available.
But, "made less pre-emptive"? No idea what that is supposed to mean.
> : Windows 95 was mainly a graphical refresh of Windows 3.11 and, as such, not much of an OS,
Well, apart from being a 32-bit pre-emptively scheduled kernel, instead of 16-bit co-operative.
But aside from the graphical refresh, the extra 16 bits for consistent flat memory addressing and the pre-emptive scheduler, what did '95 ever do for us?
> I'd object to the notion 'counterfeit chip', BTW
When FTDI's driver overwrote the id bytes in the counterfeits, a lot of end users found they'd been sold devices which were advertised as containing FTDI parts - but clearly didn't. Despite the markings, which also caught out (some of) the sellers and manufactures.
So, yes, counterfeit.
FTDI's action, giving your cable a Glasgow Kiss instead of just refusing to work, was - not a good idea.
But we did find out why a few cables didn't actually work properly - some of the fakes didn't properly implement all the control lines, so they'll do the basic serial transfer but won't trigger your board to go into program update mode.
> Microsoft's driver looked for FTDI's device-id ...
> loaded the totally generic USB-serial driver...
> Then Microsoft did the patch...
The driver wasn't Microsoft's, it was written by FTDI for the FTDI devices, so, yes, it looks for their device ids: worth it, as the FTDI devices have reliable implementation of all the extra signals in RS232/etc as well as I2C and GPIO (depending upon the chip used).
FTDI was solely responsible for the brick-a-fake (and they were fakes - reporting back as FTDI and sold as containing FTDI). Their driver arrives via Microsoft's servers, as do other manufacturers, because they went through the process to get them there. Unlike the purveyors of CH340 etc.
The "bricking" was a stupid thing to do and was rolled back soon after.
I'd be angrier about it if it wasn't so easy, as the end user, to bring your fakes back to life: all that happened was that the id had been set to all zeroes, using AFAIK the same process by which they had been set to the FTDI ids.
As for dumping FTDI devices - not anywhere where I was. Their chips are better than the alternatives - which is why we want to keep them in Scotland. Just so long as they don't try to give out any more Glasgow Kisses to our cables!
As the linked-to article points out, doge.com is (currently) just a mirror of their Twitter posts.
But at least that means we can see those tweets without going anywhere near, let alone actually logging onto, The Website That Must Not Be Named[1].[2]
Though you just gotta love a dot-com that has to stick at the top "An official website of the United States government" without any kind of recognisable logo, let alone a dot-gov address. Yeah, I'm convinced. Ooh, look, this other website says that is is "The official website of Prince Burt of Nigeria" and he would like me to do him a favour.
[1] come on, "x" isn't a name, it is the canonical placeholder for the thing you don't know the name of.
[2] and having read the first page or so: now we see the very definition of "picayune"! That lot is a triumph against waste and will lead to saving two trillion dollars? Meanwhile, let's kill off more US Soft Power influence... And damn those come paper straws!
and not purchased from a data broker. Or anyone else, like the rights holders?
Nah, it must be ok, because as we all know there is no copyright material on the web and if it just happened to be scraping every podcast, every bit of online radio playable in the browser, one or two million YouTube videos...
>> better to rewrite from scratch and start again ... I guess one person's functional code is always gonna be another's technical debt.
> Yes indeed. That is exactly how linux got started.
Is that the case? Exactly?
Torvalds has described how he started process switching code not because Minix wasn't good enough but because the discs were taking several months to arrive! What else was he going to spend the time doing?[1]. When Minix did arrive, he wasn't terribly pleased with it so from that point you could say he decided it needed to be rewritten - but then again, Minix was only open-sourced in 2000 - before then, even though you could buy a copy of the source to read and compile, plus a book to explain it all to you, it was still proprietary code: not that easy to fix it up and distribute the changes.
Perhaps if Torvalds's University course had used XINU and *its* book, instead of Minix, he might have directly patched that rather than "start again" (XINU was open source from the beginning, around 1984).
[1] ok, he admits he spent time playing video games as well!
> the GNU/FSF intended |_inux to be a stopgap for Hurd (which is likely correct)
Likely correct? Really? Sorry, going to need a citation for that...
I'm afraid that I can find no place where GNU/FSF ever even suggest such a thing. They do talk about running HURD within Qemu under GNU/Linux but don't seem unduly angsty about doing that. When talking about Linux and the GNU System, Stallman has said "Fortunately, we didn't have to wait for the Hurd, because of Linux. Once Torvalds freed Linux in 1992, it fit into the last major gap in the GNU system." and "The GNU Project supports GNU/Linux systems as well as the GNU system"; no doubt that he would like to see HURD get wide use one day, but the FSF generally seems chuffed that all their other projects (piffling little things, like GCC :-) ) are gainfully employed.
> Your link is broken
Blast, you are right, copied and pasted from the wrong bit of the browser; here is the link going via the Wayback Machine.
Having said that, it isn't "my" link, it is the link from the Wikipedia page for the lines that *you* quoted (their [5]) so I'd've hoped that you would have recognised that - and been able to comment that I'd just missed putting on the Wayback prefix.
> In 40 years of software development I've lost count of the number of times a small group of engineers have said it would be better to rewrite from scratch and start again.
And doesn't it also seem that, if only they had asked someone if their analysis of the extant code was correct, they could have so often had their misunderstanding quietly & calmly pointed out and saved all the bother of rewiting?
> He would have financed it with individual donations and not big companies backing
Linux did not get big companies' backing until it was successful enough that those companies were making use of it, even becoming reliant upon it. It started small and then grew. If Hector started his own project, yes, it would begin with individual donations - but as soon as it gained traction with large companies (i.e. was demonstrated to be, you know, useful), it would attract their donations.
> He would have done with youngsters and not old AIX devs
Hmm, let me just see - ah, yes, "a 21-year old Mr Torvalds has released a new kernel project". Of course, since then, even Linus is now "an old dev" (not sure about the AIX bit).
> will one day retire just as Amiga OS, Solaris or Plan 9
Hmm, Plan 9 never was mainstream (athough parts of it are in widespread daily use, e.g. if you use KVM/QEmu), Oracle quietly extends Solaris 11.4 support until 2037 but, ok, AmigaOS is only in the hands of the rabid fans now. But if Linux takes as long to get to that state, it'll outlive me at least!
> So Hector ... move on another project ... Both projects, Linux and your own, can exist in the world.
For Hector, at least, that does sound like a good idea. Unfortunately, from what we can see at the moment, he seems to be bereft of anything to move on to at the moment.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd ...
Nothing in that says that Linux was ever a stopgap for HURD!
> "When the Linux kernel proved to be a viable solution"... "development of GNU Hurd slowed"
And if you read the article that Wikipedia uses as a source for the line you quoted, the article does NOT say that HURD development slowed BECAUSE of Linux. The pace of development of HURD has never exactly been speedy - for Heaven's Sake, HURD was "on its way" since the 1980s!
Oh, I forgot:
> C++ wasn't about OOP
> ...
> RAII - tying the lifetime of resources to the lexical scope of an owning handle
RAII is built upon the object model (your "owning handle" has to be an object with the actual handle/pointer/id of the resource as a member, so that the constructor and destructor of that object manage the resource. And it isn't anything specific to do with lexical scope - the resource is managed by the lifetime of the object, which *might* be lexical scope but need not be. That is, RAII is provided courtesy of the OOPness.
> C++ wasn't about OOP
Funny, could have sworn that the oldest version was called "C with classes".
> Shared container...
That came well after the first few releases,vwith templates - and then that chap at HP describing the template- metaprogramming library that became STL. Many years into the life of C++.
> It's a little dated now but excellent book...
If you actually want to learn what C++ "was meant to be", start with Stroustrup's Green Book about the history of the language (sorry, don't have a URL at the moment)
Well, use of "£inux" isn't helping. What is that supposed to be? Some weird reference to the old use of Micro$oft, indicating how expensive it is to buy a Linux licence?
Plus the weird idea that the GNU project would need or want to take over another kernel, let alone changing the licence from MIT to do so. As with Linux, if you want to use the GNU tools to flesh out a complete system around your kernel, just do it. GNU itself need not take over your kernel.
And the final nail, the weird idea that Linux was ever intended, by anyone, to be a stopgap until HURD was production ready, presumably with the idea that, at that point, Linux would just - stop.
> £inux as a kernel was of course only intended in the 1990s as a stopgap with the HURD being the ultimate aim.
Citation?
Linux and HURD are from entirely different people.
I don't recall Linus ever saying he intended to create a stopgap until the HURD was ready - in fact, his announcement was that Linux "is just a hobby" and "won't be big and professional like Gnu". It was just a response to the licensing around Minix.
Support from Microsoft? It is to laugh, ha ha.
Not even basic stuff, like a paid-for upgrade working, certainly no bloody chance to get your money back when it clearly doesn't!
I had a legit copy of Visio. Then Ms bought them out. Next release, you can get as an upgrade for less than full whack. Jolly good, here is my dosh. Installer demands that I enter my serial number, showing a very MS-format entry box.
But Visio Corp never issued me a serial number, it just came in a nice box with useful manuals, no serial number in sight. A more elegant program for a more trusting time.
Can I get my money back? Of course not, I'd opened the box and run the installer, what more did I want?!
Seethe.
> Than there are many others that are simply exploited by brainwashing them that FOSS should be the only way to develop and distribute software and two legs, oops, commercial software, is bad and evil. So the above company can just pay far less developers than they would need if they had to pay the full development/test/etc
Sorry, are you trying to say that those companies are somehow brainwashing people they have no connection with, all over the world?
Open Source has been around for a long time (by computing standards), are we to believe that Microsoft was engaging in X-Files style mind control at the time of the Halloween Memo?
The Truth Us Out There.
> People 'adopt' Tigers and guide dogs, supporting them
Ooh, I like that idea.
Do we get to have plush dolls[1] made of us and a monthly newsletter, with pictures of the free-range devs gamboling in a meadow whilst the build is running?
Although, hmm, guide dogs: you support those from puppyhood, paying for their training. But if we put a student through a programming course, do we get a guarantee that he'll work on the codebase we're interested in?
[1] icon - what the world probably thinks we look like (or, cough, could we have a hacker-inna-hoodie icon?)
There do seem to be a fair old number of GitHub entries[1] that are abandoned after little more than an initial commit with an ambitious statement of intent.
But I'm never sure how serious those were, whether they tried and then ran into a brick wall of unpreparedness or just never actually did anything at all beyond that commit (because the world and their dog never came around, excited by their idea and ready to hand over support?[2])
[1] no, can not give any URLs, never thought I'd want to go back to them! Sigh, "take notes on everything" they said, but I didn't listen.
[2] cynical old gititude coming out to the fore again.
That clause does not say anything at all about obligating an author to actually make any future changes whatsoever. All it says is that, if you (and if you bother to distribute them - it doesn't even force you to do that) then you don't get to change the rules on anyone else.
Far from forcing everyone else to give the corporates a free ride, that clause can - and does - mean the same corporates make their own changes and then hand them over - purely in their own self-interest, because if they kept the mods to themselves they'd have to pay to re-integrate into all the later releases. So now every one gets to benefit.[1]
That is why even Microsoft makes submissions into Linux (and some commentards in the last few days have been complaining that Linux is now in the thrall of Big Corporations).
[1] yes, plenty of corporates don't do that - but they wouldn't anyway, no matter if the clause you highlit existed or not.
Some people like to create PDF files that are complicated forms with lots of validation - but a strange ability to clear all the already filled in fields when it decides your answer to question 37 is out of range.
That requires JavaScript and all the programming skills that are usually applied to - create website forms with the strange ability to...
> Floppy disk image emulators? as opposed to a USB key?
You do know that you can't plug a USB key into a port that expects a floppy disk? Unless you have an emulator to make it look like (s pile of) floppy disk images?
> USB mouse? as opposed to a *decent* one that you can buy for cheap?
No, that is another adapter that lets you plug your "*decent*" mouse into a system that otherwise won't accept it.
> These are at best solutions in search of a problem.
So, you aren't a member of the retro-computing community, the ones that are working hard to keep old systems alive and working (as best they can, given the lack of new floppy disk stocks or serial/other mice in the shops).
> Even as a hobby, "Do it and learn," this doesn't interest me.
Well, as you really didn't understand that post, it isn't a surprise it doesn't interest you. And as you never tried to learn what was being talked about before replying..
Not going to argue with you, those are all good reasons for looking for an active project to start with.
Sadly, the person I was referring to was (apparently) already a contributor to projects, so wasn't trying to break into the game. I think it really stuck in my head because, on that page at least, nobody disagreed with them (or I'd've gleefully recounted the hordes of Redditors slashing away in response).
> Some of them might be worried about whether they're wasting their time, whether they will be able to use skills they aren't certain of without either breaking something or getting shouted at, or many more understandable things.
FWIW[1] I'd suggest looking for a project that doesn't have a mass of activity, is a piece of software that you actually use, a lot, and which has something you believe is missing/needs improvement[2]. That way you can do the changes to improve your day to day experience, without spending hours integrating a mass of code churn[3], and you get the time to do a load of real-world testing of your idea & your code before taking the plunge and offering it up. And because it is something that is demonstrably useful to you, even if it gets rejected a couple of times (coding style, whatever) there is still purpose behind continuing with that code, which makes it sensible to then keep your mods alive, locally, for a while before working up to submitting it again. Finally, this approach means that there actually is a really good reason for you to try - and try again: if it gets accepted you'll be spared having to merge your changes back in every time the project updates!
[1] not a lot, really, but I have your attention now, bwa ha haah
[2] yes, this is simply the "scratching an itch" approach, nothing novel, just wanted to expand on why it is a sensible one for a newbie contributor to take
[3] as you gain experience, this just becomes "one of those things" but it is always easier if people just stay the heck away from the area you are working on!
> These toy controllers are too basic to make something remotely interesting with them
IBM PC 5150 released with 16KiB of memory (motherboard can hold up to 256KiB, expansion cards up to 650Kib), 16-bit CPU (8 bit bus) at 4.77MHz; basic model ($1,565 woth 16KiB) had no floppy. Dual floppies held 350KiB each. Mains power required. Expansion required to add video output (CGA included in that price), RAM expansion and any i/o (serial or parallel printer ports).
Raspberry Pi RP2350 MCU: bare processor provides 520KiB RAM, dual-core 32-bit CPU at 133MHz; available with in-package 2MiB Flash storage; expansion allows up to 16MiB of RAM/Flash mix; USB 1.1 including PHY; 2x UART TTL serial, lots of other GPIO, timers, PWM. Runs off 5V USB, battery power very possible.
Basic Raspberry Pi Pico 2 board: "Basic" RP2350 with 4MiB Flash (£4.80 at Pi Hut).
Ah yes, I fondly remember the early '80's, when we were paid to sit around all day with our single-floppy IBM PCs, playing cards, reading the newspaper and dunking digestive biscuits whilst we reassured our managers that in only a few years time they'd release an IBM PC compatible that had enough resources that we could *finally* do something remotely interesting with them.
OTOH once you get enough experience under your belt, let the years roll by and your beard whiten, it is the damn fools who stick in your mind - and certainly make for better anecdotes in a forum like this. So that is what you are going to read about here.
Like your drive home - you remember vividly the two prats who tailgated you but the two or three hundred other cars who were also sharing the motorway this afternoon made no impression on you at all, just a gentle background drone.
I've also had many pleasurable days in work, going over the ins and outs of code with colleagues - who all seemed progressively younger! But how well I successfully "mentored" them? Haven't a clue! I just took enough encouragement from the occasional "Ta" to keep on getting up, wandering over and seeing how things were getting on, what new toys they had found that I could then pick their brains about. There you are, that was a riveting read, eh!
I wish I'd kept the URL, but one of the comments I remember from my introductory experiences with Reddit (admittedly, I was rather late to that particular party, so it was probably within the last five years) was from some random person who described how they scanned through the open issues on GitHub, looking for projects that were sufficiently important/had enough downloads/lots of stars in order to find ones that were worthy of his contribution.
The problem there is that the marketing department is chock full of people who are paid professionals, trained in the art of the snow job, pulling the wool other every sensory organ and polishing turds. All of which can be as easily turned against the CFO scrutinising at the products marketing like to use as it can the buyers of the products their company sells.
Ah, now *there* is the Agile mindset!
(Because optimisation attempts might not work, debugging takes an unknown amount of time and the "number of days card game" is useless on it; but we can always just spend 5 days on a new feature and if it isn't finished we can just say we did the MVP version and need to pass it by the user rep).
Agile guys?
Sod off.
That was the mantra from at least the 1980s.[1]
Gawd, those guys will try to claim everything as theirs!
And too few of the "Agile guys" knew what the profiler is to ever locate the *correct* bits of the code that are actually worth speeding up. (Exit stage left, pursued by a barely controlled urge to rant how mind boggingly slow some code was).
[1] and before then we were more about trying to get it all to fit into the machine in the first place, so "fast" was fourth on the list.
> The main thing is that I'm getting better (and quicker) and writing the right prompts rather than having to refine lots of prompts over and over.
Are you reusing the same prompt (plus copy'n'paste the article text)?
If not, and you are thinking up new prompts (and are those 100 words or less)?
If your task is to write 100 words to summarise something you already know about, is it really more efficient, timewise, to use an AI or are you spending more time and effort on it - but having more fun playing with the LLM? So it feels (at the moment) like the easier way to do it.
Negligence in all of those areas is covered by regulations, guidelines and contracts that are applicable to the field and end use. That already includes the software components: if you are writing critical systems then you follow, eg, SIL and are held to it.
> So, why not start drafting that offence list?
It makes as much sense to create an offence of allowing a buffer overflow as it does to create an offence of a dry solder joint or an under-torqued bolt: the bolt was in my Meccano Eiffel Tower, the solder was for my light-up-beanie and the software was for my Moog emulator.
If you want to incarcerate the coder who let that overflow slip by then you have to use the same mechanism that would allow you to incarcerate the spanner jockey who failed to tighten the bolt - and so far I've failed to come up with a search result for a law that created the offence of under-torquing.
> a lot of other languages ... there is a more full-featured option as default
Absolutely. And more power to them.
However, the question was about C (and C++), which - we all admit - has only the absolute bare minimum work done by the compiler to deal with the necessary evil of allowing (static) constant strings to be defined in your source code.
> Only some types of programs can use the model you describe
True.
Then again, that is trivially true for every single model you could ever describe. The interesting bit is whether the "some type" is a large number of programs (or even a large subset of programs).
> All the strings going back and forth to that will either be C strings...
When you look at it, all those inter-library strings tend to be passed as a buffer+length pair (preferably also null-terminated, if not hope for a better library) or even buffer+bufsize+strlen. In really well-behaved cases you can get a lock token included as well. Yes, often using a struct to keep that info together, but that doesn't imply that struct actually is "their own internal format", just a simple way to pass the data between libraries. The "pointer to a null terminated buffer" also happens to be a C string, useful for a quick printout.
All of which sounds terribly nasty to deal with, but: you get exactly the same effect with other forms of data, once you get beyond simple numerics; anything that can be a non-trivial size. Strings are not unique in that respect[1]. So image handling libraries all have their own formats (some choose to be compatible with a.n.other popular library, which is fine - until that library changes it's format or just gets overshadowed by the next big thing). Again, when you need to pass images from one library to another, you tend to end up being handed a buffer plus some metadata and you do the impedance matching as necessary.
[1] although you can argue that more people use strings than any other type, but I'd suggest looking at how many actually manipulate strings[2] versus just spitting out fixed text: hello_world.c doesn't do any string processing, the M4 macro processor does.
[2] I'd also look at how many (try to) write code to manipulate strings when they really don't need to. A lot of code will (sensibly) pass image handling over to a subprocess using, say, ImageMagick via it's executable, rather than linking it in as a library. Ditto ffmpeg or cURL. If you are really doing a lot of work to manipulate strings and your main program is in C, you can do a lot worse than invoking a specialised string footling program rather than a library.
