Comment by tialaramex
2 days ago
I can't rationalize how "prevents... except" isn't still just heuristics.
r/cpp is full of people with such heuristics, ways that they personally have fewer safety bugs in their software. That's how C++ got its "core guidelines", and it is clearly the foundation of Herb's profiles. You can't get to safety this way, you can get closer than you were in a typical C++ codebase and for Geoff that was important.
> I can't rationalize how "prevents... except" isn't still just heuristics.
“Prevent something unless obviously safe” is a core pattern of rules in type systems. For example variable assignment in Java. If it’s possibly unsafe (RHS is not a subtype of LHS) then it’s prevented.
Are you saying Java and all of classic type theory is just heuristics?