Re:Russia starts blocking VPN at the protocol (WireGuard, Op...
by tialaramex on Thursday August 10, 2023 @11:10AM
(#37077144)
> I'm not sure why developers freak out over races so much
In all languages if you cause a data race you lose Sequential Consistency. Java's experience teaches us that even if you go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that everything else is still fine, programmers cannot reason about non-trivial software without Sequential Consistency and so now they can't fix it. In something like C or C++ all races are Undefined Behaviour, all bets are off. In Go as we saw some data races aren't immediately dangerous but even if you're careful you do lose Sequential Consistency and so good luck doing anything when you don't understand what your program means any more.
> And for these, we have tons of solutions
If you put the solution in place and thus prevent a data race, you don't have a data race. Now, when was the last time you wrote a program in which you got everything right first time?
In all languages if you cause a data race you lose Sequential Consistency. Java's experience teaches us that even if you go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that everything else is still fine, programmers cannot reason about non-trivial software without Sequential Consistency and so now they can't fix it. In something like C or C++ all races are Undefined Behaviour, all bets are off. In Go as we saw some data races aren't immediately dangerous but even if you're careful you do lose Sequential Consistency and so good luck doing anything when you don't understand what your program means any more.
> And for these, we have tons of solutions
If you put the solution in place and thus prevent a data race, you don't have a data race. Now, when was the last time you wrote a program in which you got everything right first time?