Re:I'm Not a Fan of Strlcpy(3)
by shermantanktop on Monday July 15, 2024 @11:04AM
(#40968497)
C is fine. Yes, it has undefined behaviors and encourages subtle thinkos. But it’s a tool and sometimes it’s the right tool.
It’s the C hackers who insist on using it for inappropriate applications who create the problems.
Anything string-heavy and internationalized is a terrible place for C, even if you have spent 30 years dancing through the C minefield and are sure you’ll get it right this time.
The suckless.org initiative is a great example of this. Boasting about how certain software inherently sucks less because it has minimalist C code, rather than having defense-in-depth against security holes.
Newsflash, a few decades ago the majority of software was the minimalist C that they claim sucks less. There are many reasons we moved on from that world, security firmly among them.
C is okay — not fan-worthy, but okay — for one specific kind of program: a mostly-portable implementation of a real language in which to write every other kind of program. that’s not nothing: implementing a backend for every CPU-OS pair one wants to support is a pain, and a different skillset from writing, say, a web browser or text editor.
I wonder how much C has held back the development of computing.