Re: [TUHS] Comments on "C"

Every time someone starts spouting about how unsafe C is, and how all the world's problems would be solved if only people would stop using it, I think of Flon's Axiom, for 35 years my favourite one-liner about programming and languages: There does not now, nor will there ever, exist a programming language in which it is the least bit hard to write bad programs. Flon's Axiom comes from a short note On Research in Structured Programming, published in SIGPLAN Notices in October 1975. It's just as true today. Over the years I've seen people misinterpret the Axiom as an argument against looking for better programming languages at all, but that's not what it means. (Read the original note--it's a page and a half--for full context; it is, alas, behind ACM's Digital Library paywall.) There are certainly languages that make certain sorts of mistakes easier or harder, or are easier or harder to read, but in the end most of that really is up to the programmer. Programming well requires a lot of thought and care and careful rereading, and often throwing half the code out and re-doing it better, and until we can have a programming community the majority of whom are up to those challenges, we will continue to have crashes and security vulnerabilities and other embarrassing bugs aplenty, no matter what language is used. Norman Wilson Toronto ON