Biden administration calls for developers to embrace memory-safe programing languages and move away from those that cause buffer overflows and other memory access vulnerabilities.

White House urges developers to dump C and C++::Biden administration calls for developers to embrace memory-safe programing languages and move away from those that cause buffer overflows and other memory access vulnerabilities.

  • ben@lemmy.zipEnglish
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    8 months ago

    Probably a good idea, plenty of languages out there that can give good performance while being memory safe nowadays.

  • treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
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    8 months ago

    “We, as a nation, have the ability—and the responsibility—to reduce the attack surface in cyberspace and prevent entire classes of security bugs from entering the digital ecosystem but that means we need to tackle the hard problem of moving to memory safe programming languages,” National Cyber Director Harry Coker said in the White House news release.

    o7

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
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        8 months ago

        It’s a hard sacrifice to make, but if that means killing Windows, then mwahahaha… I mean, MS’s power lies in supporting all that legacy.

    • mox@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
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      8 months ago

      C isn’t bad. It has been a good portable assembly language for ages, and remains so today. What’s problematic is continuing to use it where more advanced languages now make more sense.

      I won’t defend C++, though. I’m happy to kick it to the curb now that better alternatives are gaining traction.

  • omega_x3@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    8 months ago

    Team Fortran raise up, but not too fast our old bones aren’t as strong as they used to be.

  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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    8 months ago

    I think we should politicize code. It seems so unfettered by politics so far while so many other things are nicely split amongst party lines. Seems like maybe the Republicans should embrace C and the democrats can have python or something.

    • sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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      8 months ago

      Republicans get C, Java, Lua, and C++; Democrats get Ada, Rust, C#, and Python; Libertarians get Zig, TCL, Julia, and Ocaml for some reason.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
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        8 months ago

        I thought this is a tech space, but you’ve just made a lot of people Republicans.

        One would also expect Ada to be Republican.

        And can libertarians please have Common Lisp?

        • Sylvartas@lemmy.worldEnglish
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          8 months ago

          Ada could never be republican, on the basis that it’s named after a british woman scientist. I don’t think she’s on record as a feminist, but that’s about the only thing that would make her “worse” in their eyes

          Also why do the democrats only get languages for people who don’t care about performances ? /s ^(it’s just a prank bro)

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
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            8 months ago

            I was thinking about the association of the Ada language with defense stuff, and also her being Byron’s daughter, which is more specific than being British, I’m not sure she’d complain about associations with Republicanism, but then this can also be interpreted in favor of libertarians.

            No, the question is valid about weird selection of languages for Democrats. I think what they meant is that separation of various issues between parties is orthogonal to any sane logic, so we should do this with programming languages too.

            Also I want to know who gets Erlang.

  • OutrageousUmpire@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    8 months ago

    I’m not sure what to think about this. It’s bizarre, the White House making any recommendations on programming languages.

    They’re definitely not seen as an authority in this field. Why would anyone care what recommendation they make? And so why make one at all?

    • someacnt_@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      8 months ago

      There have been words around this, like how software should be safe by design, but the regulation should come from the governing entity. This is simply materialized now, but there has been momentum.

    • mox@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
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      8 months ago

      They’re definitely not seen as an authority in this field. Why would anyone care what recommendation they make?

      It’s possible that they are acting on the advice of advisors who are authorities in this field.

      And so why make one at all?

      I expect it’s because information and industrial security are components of national security, which is of great concern to them, and those things depend on software.

      I’m not surprised to see this, given that state-sponsored electronic attacks are on the rise these days.

      • EatATaco@lemm.eeEnglish
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        8 months ago

        This is exactly why people sound sophomoric when they say “lobbying needs to go!” There are some drastic problems with lobbying as it is allowed now, but the last thing we need is the government regulating things they know nothing about without the input of experts. On top of that, it’s nonsense that I can’t pass my local councilman on the street and stop and push them to spend more time addressing important issues like climate change.

        • mox@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
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          8 months ago

          It’s important to remember that the argument against lobbying isn’t about the broadest sense of the word “lobbying”, but rather about corporations and other moneyed interests having unfair and unhealthy influence over the laws that govern everyone else.

          The people who decry lobbying probably agree with you; they’re just using the word in an implicitly narrow context.

          • EatATaco@lemm.eeEnglish
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            8 months ago

            they’re just using the word in an implicitly narrow context.

            I think we mostly agree, but disagree on this point. I think it’s just that most people haven’t given it any thought. Like they are just ignorantly going along with the popular opinion.