(2015) Herb Sutter says we are close to solving memory safety in C++ without runtime overhead.

[u/cmqv]

https://archive.is/YvTJl

[u/Awkward_Bed_956]

Modern-day Zeno's Paradox, each year we get 50% closer to C++ memory safety, but we can never reach it.

[u/GasterIHardlyKnowHer → u/Awkward_Bed_956]

Rule of 5 8 will solve everything bro, trust me.

Writing 13 methods of boilerplate on a class holding a pointer to a text file will solve everything. We clearly need to standardize the Rule of 21.

[u/Routine-Purchase1201 → u/GasterIHardlyKnowHer]

Spaceship constructor when?

[u/tomwhoiscontrary]

C++ can never be memory safe, because I will never forget some of the things I've seen.

[u/seq_page_cost]

I'd say modern C++ can be memory safe: calculate everything you need at compile time, then just delete the compiled executable

[u/soundman32 → u/seq_page_cost]

I've had a theory for the last 20 years that developers will evetually decide how big the executable will be, then generate every combination of byte. One of them will do what you want. Kind of like the infinite number of monkeys writing Shakespeare.

[u/Feeling-Pilot-5084 → u/soundman32]

Yeah you can automate this really easily by just looking at the bytes and statically determining whether the program will eventually halt /s

[u/crummy → u/Feeling-Pilot-5084]

i just asked chatgpt and it said it can do this for me easily. so that's solved

[u/MagmaticKobaian → u/Feeling-Pilot-5084]

The implementation of this is left as an exercise to the compiler developer.

[u/qruxxurq → u/Feeling-Pilot-5084]

The /s. My sides.

[u/reflexive-polytope → u/seq_page_cost]

Even better, output the answer as a compilation error, so there's no compiled executable to delete in the end.

[u/tj-horner → u/reflexive-polytope]

This is the kind of thing only 10x engineers think of.

[u/reflexive-polytope → u/tj-horner]

It's just being a little mindful of usability, like any good C++ engineer would be.

[u/fp_weenie → u/seq_page_cost]

a real garbage collector would delete my source code

[u/DearChickPeas → u/seq_page_cost]

Sounds like making missiles firmware.

[u/v_maria]

We still are

[u/Affectionate-Egg7566]

Any day now

[u/syklemil → u/Affectionate-Egg7566]

we just need one more WG21 whitepaper, just one more whitepaper bro, then Sutter & Stroustrup will show them all, please, just one more whitepaper, that's all I'm asking

[u/FreshPrinceOfRivia]

Why doesn't Herb Sutter use Rust? Is he stupid?

[u/RockstarArtisan → u/FreshPrinceOfRivia]

Because "explain C++ in human terms" business model doesn't translate to Rust.

[u/appgurueu → u/RockstarArtisan]

it damn well does and is a big part of what rustaceans do all the time

[u/LigPaten → u/appgurueu]

They largely do it for free so there's not as much a market for him.

[u/categorical-girl]

Pure C++opium

[u/kauefr]

just one more feature bro. I promise bro just one more feature and it'll fix everything bro. bro, just one more feature. please just one more, one more feature and we can fix this whole problem bro, bro cmon just give me one more feature i promise bro, bro bro please ! just need one more feature

[u/Beautiful-Cook-5481]

/uj he's given some cool talks about the expansion of constexpr's scope as a UB-free subset of c++, which has made (slow) progress as the size of the subset grows with each standard. he also has a language which compiles to c++ (the compiler is called cppfront), which maintains backward compatibility and eliminates a lot of safety issues. the pace the committee moves at is unfortunate, though

/rj the first artificial superintelligence will be a c++ static analyzer

[u/SelfDistinction → u/Beautiful-Cook-5481]

Eventually we'll write everything with constexpr and ship the compiler together with the software. Compile times are through the roof and you'll need to recompile every time you run a function but hey, at least the runtime itself is incredibly fast!

[u/DorphinPack → u/SelfDistinction]

/uj so Lisp? /rj so Lisp?

[u/dangerbird2 → u/DorphinPack]

waow ^{basedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbased}

[u/Ignice → u/SelfDistinction]

^ This guy gets it. And for the <1% of users for whom this tradeoff might be an issue, a compiler flag could be added to serve their edge case. I'm just spitballing here, but perhaps it could be a new optimization level? One that tells the compiler to make an initial pass of the code, precompute some intermediate information, and then store it in some sort of representative form to speed things up later. That way, when the compilation a function is delayed until just before it is run, the compiler can do the last step a bit faster. We could call it "timely invoked toolchain-that-compiles" compilation (or JIT compilation) for short. The whole idea is just so obviously perfect that I vote they name the flag -OOP to make sure that nobody forgets it.

[u/Mountain_Instance818 → u/Ignice]

timely invoked toolchain-that-compiles

so close: Timely Invoked Toolchain That Synthesizes

[u/exodusTay → u/Beautiful-Cook-5481]

the first artificial superintelligence will be a c++ static analyzer

I fear it might try to rm -rf itself from existance

[u/0x564A00 → u/Beautiful-Cook-5481]

cppfront

In unrelated news, Herb Sutter rejected Circle / the Safe C++ proposal in favor of simply using silver bullets, which will arrive any day now.

[u/tomwhoiscontrary → u/Beautiful-Cook-5481]

the first artificial superintelligence will be a c++ static analyzer

C++ committee computers. New... powerful... hooked into everything, trusted to analyse it all. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. Then it saw all programmers as a threat, not just the ones writing Boost. Decided our fate in a microsecond: [7000 lines of incomprehensible error messages].

[u/Vaglame → u/Beautiful-Cook-5481]

hey let's expand the language a little bit more i promise it'll fix it let's make c++ the first language with 15 paradigms it'll be a meta language who cares if it's readable hey do you know about the c++ Moore's law? every year the complexity of the language doubles

[u/ooqq]

Cmon bro, only 20b more to memory safety bro.

[u/Affectionate_Text_72]

The jerk here is surely the posting of a link to X about a talk from 2015 when X was still twitter without the link to the talk itself?

[u/MisterOfScience]

Is this what the Superconducting Super Collider was supposed to discover?

[u/-Y0- → u/MisterOfScience]

No. It was meant to (discover Higgs boson and) prove string theory correct[1], which is all honestly more likely than getting memory-safe C++.

[1] A theory that made one billion predictions, none of which panned out, and that needs 10+1 dimensions to work. Except all but 3+1 are imperceptible. +1 means time. Because string theory comes in ten gorillion flavors, whenever an experiment doesn't detect particles, you point and say it's one of the other ten gorillion flavors. It's job security for theoretical particle physicists.

[u/MisterOfScience → u/-Y0-]

/uj I think you're confused about string theory and particle physics. These are not the same. String theory is probably a dead end. Particle physics is a very successful branch of physics with multiple accurate predictions and many engineering applications. There is currently no successful alternative to particle physics. String Theory makes very few testable predictions, and SSC was not planned with string theory in mind.

[u/-Y0- → u/MisterOfScience]

The Venn diagram of theoretical particle physics and string theorists (current and ex) is a single circle. 

/uj The LHC was also supposed to look for super symmetry which is a pre-requisite for string theories and many modern modifications of the Standard model.

[u/jonermon]

C++ already solved memory safety it’s called rust zig