But in my humble opinion, those projects shouldn’t really exist.
What's the point of your opinion if not only do these projects exist but they are also pervasive?
You cannot wish things away and pretend reality is something different.
The problem isn’t a principle of a computer science, but one of just safety.
I think you missed the point entirely.
You can focus all you want in artificial Ivory tower scenarios, such as a hypothetical ability to rewrite everything from scratch with the latest and greatest tech stacks. Back in the real world, that is a practical impossibility in virtually all scenarios, and a renowned project killer.
In addition, the point stressed in the article is that you can add memory safety features even to C programs.
Also, who said this is a principle of computer science?
Anyone who devotes any resource learning software engineering.
Here's a somewhat popular essay in the subject:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/
I never used this app but it looks like it just does what nvm already does. What exactly makes n more elegant than nvm?
From what I'm seeing, n drops the ball on Windows support, which nvm handles well.
C++ can be written to be safe. I don’t think WH is the right authority to issue this warning. Naming C++ rather than going after specific features is unfair.
I suspect that the white house just received a report from some people in the industry stating that faulty software is vulnerable to attacks from bad actors, and from that basis they just went the simplistic path of arguing that 1) lots of software is written in C++, 2) that software has bugs, therefore if we don't use C++ then we won't have bugs.
As a branch of government, their role is not to evaluate technical merits of proposals but to hear what their representatives have to say.
Honestly his defence is rather weak. “It’s been improving and there are ways to use it safely.”
I think it's a very good and clear point to make.
Some programming languages are blindly deemed "safe" in spite of supporting unsafe memory management strategies, and somehow not enforcing those rules does not render them unsafe.
Why is this logic not applied to C++?
The time for the c++ committee to show they can overcome the language’s issues has passed IMHO there are much better, and more expressive, alternatives.
I'm not sure if this is a good take.
Languages deemed "safe" boil down to two features: supporting specific memory management strategies, and adding static code analysis checks that enforce rules and best practices.
Can't this be done already without involving committees?
Even following the guidelines, modern C++ is just a huge pile of half-finished ideas.
You're making it pretty clear that you are completely oblivious to what C++ is, what are the differences between C++ versions, and what are the real world issues solved by each new version.
I would ask you to clarify your persona clams by providing a concrete example to back each of your statements, but I know you have none.
Well ok, but the concern is about the weaknesses, Mr. Stroustrup.
I don't think these discussions on "weaknesses" come from a place of intelectual honesty. None of these arguments even touches the fact that there are already a myriad of freely available static code analysis tools and memory profilers that do a very good job catching memory safety issues.
For some unexplainable reason, these criticisms of C++ always focus on a single strawman: these tools do not exist and no developer in the world cares about the topic.
So how fucked am I for starting to learn cpp as my first language, or is this a later down the road thing to worry about?
I don't see why you should be concerned, except that no professional software developer is limited to use one specific programming language.
Even if you pay attention to the disaster prophets in the crowd, which are mainly comprised of fanboys implicitly and explicitly promoting their pet language/frameworks, C++ dominates all aspects of the computing ecosystem, which means that in the very least the whole world needs to maintain existing C++ projects to continue to work. See COBOL for reference.
Such a braindead exercise to see Redis follow suit
I agree, this sounds like a desperate cash grab.
I mean, cloud providers who are already using Redis will continue to do so without paying anything at all, as they're using stable versions of a software project already released under a permissive license. That ship has sailed.
Major cloud providers can certainly afford developing their own services. If Amazon can afford S3 and DynamoDB, they can certainly develop from the ground up their own Redis-like memory cache. In fact, Microsoft already announced Garnet, which apparently outperforms Redis in no small way.
So who exactly is expected to pay for this?
They aren't wrong. No one in their right mind just throws away years of work delivering a stable production project just because a random clueless person in the internet said something. It's lunacy.