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submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

White House urges developers to dump C and C++::Biden administration calls for developers to embrace memory-safe programing languages and move away from those that cause buffer overflows and other memory access vulnerabilities.

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[-] OutrageousUmpire@lemmy.world 75 points 10 months ago

I’m not sure what to think about this. It’s bizarre, the White House making any recommendations on programming languages.

They’re definitely not seen as an authority in this field. Why would anyone care what recommendation they make? And so why make one at all?

[-] mox 66 points 10 months ago

They’re definitely not seen as an authority in this field. Why would anyone care what recommendation they make?

It's possible that they are acting on the advice of advisors who are authorities in this field.

And so why make one at all?

I expect it's because information and industrial security are components of national security, which is of great concern to them, and those things depend on software.

I'm not surprised to see this, given that state-sponsored electronic attacks are on the rise these days.

[-] EatATaco@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago

This is exactly why people sound sophomoric when they say "lobbying needs to go!" There are some drastic problems with lobbying as it is allowed now, but the last thing we need is the government regulating things they know nothing about without the input of experts. On top of that, it's nonsense that I can't pass my local councilman on the street and stop and push them to spend more time addressing important issues like climate change.

[-] mox 10 points 10 months ago

It's important to remember that the argument against lobbying isn't about the broadest sense of the word "lobbying", but rather about corporations and other moneyed interests having unfair and unhealthy influence over the laws that govern everyone else.

The people who decry lobbying probably agree with you; they're just using the word in an implicitly narrow context.

[-] EatATaco@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago

they’re just using the word in an implicitly narrow context.

I think we mostly agree, but disagree on this point. I think it's just that most people haven't given it any thought. Like they are just ignorantly going along with the popular opinion.

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[-] phoneymouse@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago

It’s a national security threat

[-] parens@programming.dev 12 points 10 months ago

C/C++ is a threat to mental stability

[-] phillaholic@lemm.ee 18 points 10 months ago

NIST are the experts guiding the White House.

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[-] someacnt_@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

There have been words around this, like how software should be safe by design, but the regulation should come from the governing entity. This is simply materialized now, but there has been momentum.

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[-] JoMomma@lemm.ee 62 points 10 months ago

Gov is getting rusty

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 58 points 10 months ago

I agree, let's start with dumping Windows.

[-] foobaz@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago

Done, next the Linux kernel? 😱

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 7 points 10 months ago

It's a hard sacrifice to make, but if that means killing Windows, then mwahahaha... I mean, MS's power lies in supporting all that legacy.

[-] omega_x3@lemmy.world 46 points 10 months ago

Team Fortran raise up, but not too fast our old bones aren't as strong as they used to be.

[-] BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago

Maybe you can use Team COBOL's wheelchairs as walkers?

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[-] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 43 points 10 months ago

Good luck with that, C/C++ are still crazy popular

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 37 points 10 months ago

well... that's the point - if they weren't this wouldn't be a concern

[-] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago

We really need to get the kids to stop programming with punch cards. /s

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[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 38 points 10 months ago

I think we should politicize code. It seems so unfettered by politics so far while so many other things are nicely split amongst party lines. Seems like maybe the Republicans should embrace C and the democrats can have python or something.

[-] sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Republicans get C, Java, Lua, and C++; Democrats get Ada, Rust, C#, and Python; Libertarians get Zig, TCL, Julia, and Ocaml for some reason.

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 15 points 10 months ago

I thought this is a tech space, but you've just made a lot of people Republicans.

One would also expect Ada to be Republican.

And can libertarians please have Common Lisp?

[-] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

Ada could never be republican, on the basis that it's named after a british woman scientist. I don't think she's on record as a feminist, but that's about the only thing that would make her "worse" in their eyes

Also why do the democrats only get languages for people who don't care about performances ? /s ^(it's just a prank bro)

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 7 points 10 months ago

I was thinking about the association of the Ada language with defense stuff, and also her being Byron's daughter, which is more specific than being British, I'm not sure she'd complain about associations with Republicanism, but then this can also be interpreted in favor of libertarians.

No, the question is valid about weird selection of languages for Democrats. I think what they meant is that separation of various issues between parties is orthogonal to any sane logic, so we should do this with programming languages too.

Also I want to know who gets Erlang.

[-] WelcomeBear@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago

Ruby is just one guy, Vermin Supreme

[-] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

Ruby-off-the-rails

[-] yuriy@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Vermin Supreme still stands by his pony plan doesn’t he? You KNOW he’s out here using FiM++

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[-] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 10 months ago

Can I both upvote and downvote you? Seems most appropriate

[-] parens@programming.dev 29 points 10 months ago

C/C++: so bad that even the white house takes notice 😂

[-] mox 24 points 10 months ago

C isn't bad. It has been a good portable assembly language for ages, and remains so today. What's problematic is continuing to use it where more advanced languages now make more sense.

I won't defend C++, though. I'm happy to kick it to the curb now that better alternatives are gaining traction.

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[-] darkevilmac@lemmy.zip 28 points 10 months ago

Probably a good idea, plenty of languages out there that can give good performance while being memory safe nowadays.

[-] hagelslager@feddit.nl 7 points 10 months ago

Such as? (Non-programmer here, so I don't know the ins and outs of programming languages.)

[-] darkevilmac@lemmy.zip 12 points 10 months ago

Zig and Rust come to mind, at least for replacements for low level languages.

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[-] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago
[-] scharf_2x40@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Isn't that only microsoft exclusive and closed source? Also does compiling it really yield the same speed as C, it is garbage collected isn't it?

[-] lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 10 months ago

Was always possible to compile+run C# on Linux using the Mono project. Until Microsoft "bought them out" and created .NET Core, a cross platform version of .NET that MS now encourages people to use instead...

Microsoft's new linux compile tools rub me the wrong way slightly, with the telemetry that's opt-in by default.

Mono is still extremely valuable for older .NET Framework apps under WINE though, way easier to setup compared to the official installers from what i've experienced.

No idea how compiled C# compares to C...

[-] Asifall@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

*proceeds to wrap everything in unsafe {}

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[-] Dzeimis@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago

Wtf, I thought this was a meme...

[-] _NetNomad@kbin.run 9 points 10 months ago

segmentation fault (c and c++ dumped)

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[-] treadful@lemmy.zip 8 points 10 months ago

“We, as a nation, have the ability—and the responsibility—to reduce the attack surface in cyberspace and prevent entire classes of security bugs from entering the digital ecosystem but that means we need to tackle the hard problem of moving to memory safe programming languages,” National Cyber Director Harry Coker said in the White House news release.

o7

[-] badbytes@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

Good reason to not drop C and C++

[-] Aopen@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 10 months ago
[-] makozuma@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Can’t we just bring back Forth and call it a day?

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this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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