Re:About the security content of macOS Monterey 12.2
by brundolf on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @09:54PM
(#30095624)
Yeah, rewriting is hard and involves lots of complex cost tradeoffs. But at least when writing new software, with today's options, I think it's much harder to justify starting out with an unsafe language.
Re:About the security content of macOS Monterey 12.2
by pjmlp on Thursday January 27, 2022 @03:18AM
(#30097692)
Today's options?
The options were always there since around 1958, then about 15 years later, a group of folks doing their tiny OS decided to ignore them when creating their fun little language, because it was more fun to do their own thing.
The problem is that this tiny OS and accompaning language grew to be everywhere thanks to its license, so now we are in this mess.
But options? They have always been there for those that actually care.
Re:About the security content of macOS Monterey 12.2
by newaccount74 on Thursday January 27, 2022 @06:12AM
(#30099019)
The hard part is interoperability. Apple is writing lots of things in Swift today, but low level libraries that are used in many places are hard to do in Swift. Interoperability with C often requires very difficult casts, and if you do them incorrectly you'll have the same kinds of bugs as in C.
Even if you have functionally unlimited money like Apple, it’s tough to prioritize rewriting a somewhat obscure piece of the OS solely to prevent security issues. Because if you have a team that’s capable of fully reimplementing this component, and getting it through a QA process to make sure it doesn’t break another component of the OS…well damn, that’s a team you probably want on a higher-profile project, and not doing cleanup, right?