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  • Zacryon@feddit.orgtolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldthe perfect browser
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    1 month ago

    Nobody tests their shit well enough nowadays!

    I think there is indeed a lack of commitment. Thanks to capitalism and therefore production deadlines. Well, given, you can’t always catch “all” potential bugs, not just memory related issues. That’s sometimes not even theoretically possible. But it’s no secret how software quality increases by testing it thouroughly. And a lot of the time I just don’t see that happening. I’ve worked at institutions where software tests were done by answering the question “does it compile and run?”. And I’ve experienced systematic tests with specialized test engineers, who still had to cut short a lot of the time. But to assume that software is always tested well enough is in my experience naive.

    Read all your other comments man!

    This is not helpful. If you have critique, be more specific. I know what I’ve written.

    I am always open to discussion and changing my views if I see convincing arguments, as I did at another place here. Your lack of patience and quick judgement of my character is not my fault, but yours. I was discussing the issues here neutrally with you so far.

    However, this topic is done for me anyway, as the discussions here did indeed change my view regarding memory safety in C++.




  • The article mentions how basic programs are missing. They acknowledge the existence of FOSS alternatives, e.g. GIMP instead of Photoshop Elements, but complain about it being too difficult or that some alternatives are simply not to be found via Mint’s “Software Manager”.

    Which is not news and probably one of the reasons why desktop Linux-based distros have still not become mainstream. There’s just a lack of all that “user-friendlyness” less tech-oriented people need.

    These things can be changed, although there is an economic barrier. FOSS projects are great and we see how many of them took off. However, if the main portion of users are not on Linux, but on Windoofs, then it doesn’t make much sense to invest time and money into developing and maintaining software for Linux while having commercial interests.
    The sad reality is that Microsoft has gained that market dominance. You won’t get end-user oriented software companies on board with Linux as long as the user-share is so comparably low. This is a self-reinforcing cycle.

    Windoofs meets UX needs and there is a lot of software people need -> most people use Windoofs -> companies develop and distribute for Windoofs -> people keep using Windoofs, etc…

    To break out of that, people need convincing alternatives. Not just for Linux alone, but especially for the software running on it.

    Which is hard to achieve, given how a plethora of Linux projects have to survive on donations alone and too few companies take the leap.

    There is a silver lining though. With the Steam Deck and Proton, Valve really got a lot more people on board with Linux. I can only hope, that this trend continues.

    But at the moment I fear that this will be short lived, especially with Microsofts “handheld Xbox” on the horizon.

    So let’s see, how this unfolds. The EOL of Windows 10 is really a strong incentive to switch to Linux. For my part, I will go for the full switch, since I’ve used Windoofs mainly for gaming anyway and am using Linux systems daily for my job. But then again, I am an engineering scientist and I can’t picture, e.g., my parents being satisfied with a Linux distro.


  • The definition of “a memory safe programming language” is not in debate at all in the programming community.

    Yes, my mistake. I’m sorry.

    This is incredibly arrogant, and, tbh, ignorant.

    You’ve willingly ignored the remaining part of that context, where I explicitly admitted problems in common usage. It was not my intention to come across as arrogant.

    there is no language construct in place to protect from these trivial memory safety issues

    Depending on what you mean by “language constructs”: there are, e.g. RAII or smart pointers. But they aren’t enforced. So it’s correct to say that C++ is inherently memory unsafe due to the lack of such enforcements. The discussions here changed my opinion about that.



  • You’ve missed the context. There are occasions in Rust where you have to use more boilerplate code which you wouldn’t have to implement in C++ to that extent.

    But saying that C++ is free of boilerplate is of course ridiculous, if you are not able to heavily leverage templates, CRTPs, macros and alike.



  • No. I changed my mind just very recently throughout this discussion.

    I agree now that the lack of enforcement of memory safe techniques in C++ makes it inherently memory-unsafe.

    That doesn’t change the fact though that it’s possible to write memory safe code, if you know what you’re doing, use the right patterns, classes etc…