Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Fortran does not end up where I'm too worried about its security. C and C++ does. At the scale I'm talking about I'm not sure we'd even say Fortran is "in use".

Assembly is in use, yes, but in 2023 I feel there is generally an understanding of the risks and I haven't seen the "write everything in assembly" crew in about 15 years. The problem is that there's still too many programmers blithely using C and C++ without realizing the risks and thinking they can cowboy through the problems. For every line of vulnerable, dangerous assembly I bet there's thousands of lines of C or C++.

There is also the problem that there have been some big bugs that got through even static analysis and fuzz testing, but I'd still be at least reasonably satisfied if all the critical software in C and C++ would be supported by those tools. Interpreters and compilers have had non-zero error rates too.

At the scale I'm talking about, Ada is a non-entity as well. It isn't used. "But it is! I'm a professional Ada programmer!" says someone reading this to themselves. In which case I would say, you darned well know what I mean and don't pretend otherwise just to try to score useless internet points. Ada is not a relevant force on the programming world. That may be sad, but it's true.




SQLite is able to carry most of the justification for C itself at this point.

Duplicating the DO-178B certification that it has obtained in an endorsed language will be an incredible burden for any who attempt it.


Ferrocene has said in the past they plan on going for DO-178 in the future.


But we do not plan on rewriting SQLite, that much I can say :)

(My reading is that the GP points to the exemplary achievement that SQLite has reached a close to (security) bugfree, at what I consider a nearly superhuman effort)


That's a good point, I certainly didn't mean to imply that you were!




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: