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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: A Famous Security Bug
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2024 23:38:26 +0100
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On 24/03/2024 21:49, Keith Thompson wrote:
> bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:
> [...]
>> But what people want are the conveniences and familiarity of a HLL,
>> without the bloody-mindedness of an optimising C compiler.
> [...]
> 
> Exactly which people want that?
> 
> The evidence suggests that, while some people undoubtedly want that (and
> it's a perfectly legitimate desire), there isn't enough demand to induce
> anyone to actually produce such a thing and for it to catch on.

I personally think (or speculate, if you feel the word is more 
appropriate given that I have no real evidence) that a major part of 
this is a lack of agreement on what optimisations these people want or 
don't want.  I expect Kaz and Bart would agree that they want C 
compilers to be required to generate code that does what they mean it to 
do, and be able to optimise within those requirements to do the required 
job as efficiently as possible.  But I expect they would disagree in 
many ways in regard to what they mean by it all - what optimisations are 
allowed, and what code /really/ means in their eyes.

The best we can reasonably hope for is for a carefully considered 
document that describes minimum requirements, and for compilers to 
provide flags to allow fine-tuning so that programmers can get the 
results they want.

And that is /exactly/ what we have with C and quality C compilers. 
Sure, none of this is perfect or an ideal fit for everyone and every 
task - but it is good enough that you'd need to come up with something 
quite extraordinary to make it attractive compared to C.

> Developers have had decades to define and implement the kind of language
> you're talking about.  Why haven't they?
>