Re: [TUHS] Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language - Unearthed!

On 9/1/2017 10:48 AM, William Cheswick wrote: I had to chuckle at the above. This was back in the day when I could telnet into almost any TOPS-20 system using user account ANONYMOUS and a password of FTP (or something similar depending on the system). It wasn't more than a few minutes before I found an unprotected file somewhere that could be altered and lay in wait for someone to run it. TOPS-10 systems were even easier. VMS wasn't a big deal either. Even the UNIX systems at the time were never really secure. I was the ARPANET's and early Internet's worst nightmare. TELENET was an even better source of stuff to look at. Thankfully, I was not malicious nor profit-driven. I still posit that C in the hands of the right people is not prone to buffer overflows any more than some library issue in C++ or higher languages. Higher languages that put up safeguards are only as good as the programmers who write the compiler/interpreter. Because deep down, the libraries themselves, or the kernel itself is written in something without hand-guards to keep you from cutting your fingers off. It's all machine code in the end with, for example, no limits on pointers except those that are constructed by more programmers or the memory protections built into the processor (i.e. DEP). In other words, by using a "safe" language you are just putting your security in the hands of other people who may or may not be as concerned as you are about it. You can only put a certain amount of bubble-wrap around a razor blade. In the end, there's still a razor blade under all those layers.