Comment by jcranmer

C and C++ are fundamentally memory-unsafe languages. That doesn't make them bad languages, but it is a reality that you have to face when you work with them. And one of the things we've learned is that building safe abstractions, while not a complete solution, does quite a long way.

And then CISA suggested that "maybe we should stop using memory-unsafe languages." And this has some of the C++ committee utterly terrified; they need something that lets them tell the government that C++, today, is memory-safe. That thing is C++ profiles. It's not about actually making C++ memory-safe, it's about being able to check the box that C++ is memory-safe, and this is so important it needs to be voted into the standards yesterday and why are you guys saying mean things about C++ profiles...

C++ profiles is a magic solution to the problem. As one committee member noted, there's not enough description of profiles yet to even figure out if it can be implemented or not. Instead, it's just a vague, well, compile with -fsanitize=address, compile with fortify-source, use hardened malloc, that makes my code memory-safe, right? And for as long as profiles remains a magic solution to check a box, it will remain vaporware in practice.

One of the real risks I see in the C++ committee is that they seem to want to drive all of the implementers out of the room.