Comment by dataflow
2 days ago
> The code in the article is not wrong. It is not unsafe. The author explicitly handles the OOM case correctly.
And hence we circle back to what I just wrote above: you're confusing the code with the program that it compiles to. Because the code isn't there solely for the purpose of being compiled into a program, it's also serving as a stepping stone for other things (learning, modification, whatever). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42733611
If it helps to phrase it differently: the code might be "compile-safe", but not "modification-safe" or "learning-safe".
I don't see why the code is not "learning safe". The code presents the simplest safe way to handle an OOM condition. Seems basically perfect for a _beginners guide_ to manual memory management.
It's not learning-safe because it teaches said learners to write bad code like this.