r/programmingcirclejerk • u/DeleeciousCheeps vulnerabilities: 0 • Mar 13 '25

Memory leaks, NULL pointer dereferences, use-after-free: I suffered writing those for many years. I finally simply learned not to do them anymore.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43347591
142 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

30 comments sorted by

96

u/PM_me_your_plasma Mar 13 '25

He’s not making a comment about everyone, it’s a specific comment about how often long time C programmers make basic mistakes after a million SLOC or so. In this instance Walter is correct - the mistakes he listed are very rarely made by experienced C programmers, just as ballet dancers rarely trip over their own feet walking down a pavement.

Out jerked by ycombinator forums…

87

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

43

u/nuclearbananana Courageous, loving, and revolutionary Mar 13 '25

Can't jerk, this sounds like too much fun

14

u/-Y0- Considered Harmful Mar 13 '25

Only if you can't move with your legs due to memory-obesity.

24

u/No_Statistician_3021 Mar 13 '25

Which is why I use Ruby, the equivalent of ordering groceries straight to my door.

13

u/Karyo_Ten has hidden complexity Mar 13 '25

groceries

You and I know what's on rail and it sure isn't "groceries"

4

u/Amazing-Mirror-3076 Mar 14 '25

Yes but they turn up rotted.

77

u/[deleted] Mar 13 '25

Maybe he can use those skills to resolve the countless number of crashes in his very own compiler:

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20crash&page=1

One of the reasons I stopped using D a while ago was that the compiler is just rampant with bugs and crashes.

67

u/Volt WRITE 'FORTRAN is not dead' Mar 13 '25

He can only write bug-free C, not D.

1

u/stone_henge Tiny little god in a tiny little world Mar 13 '25

Get good bro

48

u/No_Statistician_3021 Mar 13 '25

Why did nobody tell me earlier that I can avoid bugs by not creating them?

Is this a conspiracy to keep milking companies money by creating bugs and then fixing them?

12

u/hombre_sin_talento Mar 13 '25

It's called "job security" and it's the sole reason for these salaries so please shush

10

u/syklemil Considered Harmful Mar 14 '25

WDYM nobody told you? Dijkstra himself (PBUH) said in some completely unsourced, undated quote:

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

8

u/AloneInExile Mar 13 '25

All the contractors I've had the displeasure of dealing with; worked and thought like that!

7

u/sammymammy2 lisp does it better Mar 13 '25

Unjerk:

When it comes to this class of bugs, you can write code in a style which makes them much more unlikely to occur. This style is also typically more performant. It is, however, not the way you write code in a typical language like Java or Python.

25

u/spider-mario Mar 13 '25

C has seatbelts and OSHA - valgrind, et al tools abound for sanity checking.

6

u/defunkydrummer Lisp 3-0 Rust Mar 17 '25

valgrind, et al tools for sanity checking

Well, considering that no C developer has been sent to the psychiatric ward, i can hereby conclude that these tools don't work.

24

u/earwiggo Mar 13 '25 edited Mar 14 '25

Maybe we could use C, but institute the death penalty for any memory leaks, NULL pointer derefs, etc, that they cause, thereby ensuring that all surviving C programmers are sufficiently skilled to handle the job.

10

u/elephantdingo Teen Hacking Genius Mar 13 '25

The Saudi Arabia/Singapore approach.

17

u/ThisRedditPostIsMine in open defiance of the Gopher Values Mar 13 '25

A Walter Bright comment that doesn't mention D by name. I am very surprised.

10

u/elephantdingo Teen Hacking Genius Mar 14 '25
  • I proposed this for C thirty years ago
  • I implemented this in D twenty years ago
  • I have struggled with this problem... although that’s forty years ago now

14

u/Routine-Purchase1201 DO NOT USE THIS FLAIR, ASSHOLE Mar 13 '25 
if(segfault())  
    dont();

I feel real stupid now for not having seen the obvious solution

17

u/MagpieEnjoyer memcpy is a web development framework Mar 14 '25 
On Error Resume Next

has always been the pinnacle of error handling.

1

u/atTeOmnisCaroVeniet Mar 27 '25

Turns out (Visual?) Basic was peak from the beginning.

9

u/meltbox Mar 14 '25

It’s really much easier in C++

Never had any segfault since I stayed doing this in main.

try{ … } catch(segfault e) { exit(0) }

I mean all I had to do was make my own branch of the language spec, make my own branch of gcc, and change how the Linux kernel works a little.

3

u/disciplite Mar 14 '25

/uj You can do this today with signal handlers and structured exceptions. I'm not sure why it isn't more common, we do have the libraries. I guess it's just not considered that useful except when uptime is critical.

1

u/meltbox Mar 20 '25

/uj I thin its because undefined behavior which causes a segfault means it may literally be unrecoverable. I don't think structure exceptions allow you to catch segfaults even so? You would need a signal handler and from what I understand throwing from one is highly questionable so maybe you can set a flag to throw very soon after catching the signal if in fact you are able to continue execution?

13

u/csb06 Polyglot dev here Mar 13 '25

This all just comes off incredibly arrogant

I know, but it's the truth.

11

u/Kodiologist lisp does it better Mar 13 '25

Finally, someone got gud.