Re: Any experience with "The Last One"?

From: Gerry Quinn (gerryq_at_indigo.ie)
Date: 11/29/03 

Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 09:00:46 GMT

In article <bq4s6m$clb$6@sunnews.cern.ch>, Dan.Pop@cern.ch (Dan Pop) wrote:
>It's the other way round: safe languages get you used to the idea that
>if you got it wrong nothing catastrophal is going to happen. Furthermore,
>BASIC gets you used to the idea that it is the implementation that takes
>care of string allocation and you never have to worry about such issues.

Nothing catastrophic happens if you get a C program wrong either -
catastrophes happen when programs with bugs are deployed somewhere that
matters, and that applies to bugs in all languages.

>It's better to get experience with C programming having the security
>issues in mind. As a beginner, even when doing the wrong things from
>the security point of view, I was perfectly conscious about the risks
>I was taking. But I decided that it was the right thing to do, since
>the purpose of the program was experimenting with other things and
>doing everything safely would bloat the code and waste my time without
>teaching me anything I didn't already knew. By the time I started writing
>production code (even if it was for my exclusive usage), all the safety
>checks were in place.

There's not much reason for writing production code in C these days,
IMO. But I don't think a few safety issues have much relevance. Bugs
are possible in any language.

- Gerry Quinn

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