Code like this, there were just as many, if not more, logic errors that wouldn't be caught as there were mechanical problems that would have been caught with a more diligent compiler. There's just not the discipline there for good code, period. Too many corners cut, too much code commented out, etc.

I think with the types of errors you mentioned, that part of it definitely is ecosystem. Look at OpenBSD, for example. They've built things like a safer malloc and fairly extensive patches to gcc that have caught a lot of errors and bugs. I think C/C++ can definitely get safer without changing that much, the ecosystem just needs to get a bit angrier about warnings, etc.

Standardization, and multiple implementations, means you can have multiple sets of compiler eyeballs looking over things. The zcoin bug, for example, emits a warning with the default settings of clang, but doesn't emit a peep with the default settings of gcc. For someone working with a lot of embedded code, it also means that there's a better chance that there's an implementation of the language ready to go when you need to move to a different platform.