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A comment on How safe is Zig?. Parent comment

Re:How safe is Zig? by verdagon on Thursday June 23, 2022 @07:24PM (#31856321)
In Java, you can hold onto a reference to the UserAccount directly, for as long as you want.

The borrow checker, however, forces you to hold onto an index instead.

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Re:How safe is Zig? by anonymoushn on Thursday June 23, 2022 @07:55PM (#31856501)
Right, it sounds like you are circumventing the borrow checker and then experiencing some of the classes of bugs it was supposed to prevent. And this seems common: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1K66dMhWk
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Re:How safe is Zig? by verdagon on Thursday June 23, 2022 @09:13PM (#31856878)
> Circumventing the borrow checker

Programs often require inherent state with data that refers to other data. In these cases, one must circumvent the borrow checker, whether it be with indices, IDs, Rc, or whatever. The borrow checker simply does not allow changing data when someone has a reference to it (except for the rare case where we can use Cell).

It's a myth that we can rewrite any program to not circumvent the borrow checker.

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