← Back to context

Comment by kstrauser

13 hours ago

I’m not sure I agree with that, especially if there were easy wins that could make the world less fragile with a much smaller intermediate effort, eg with something like FilC.

I wholeheartedly agree that a future of not-C is a much better long term goal than one of improved-C.

I don't really agree, at least if the future looks like Rust. I much prefer C and I think an improved C can be memory safe even without GC.

  • > I think an improved C can be memory safe even without GC

    That's a very interesting belief. Do you see a way to achieve temporal memory safety without a GC, and I assume also without lifetimes?

    • C does have the concept of lifetimes. There is just no syntax to specify it, so it is generally described along all the other semantic details of the API. And no it is not the same as for Rust, which causes clashes with the Rust people.

    • A simple pointer ownership model can achieve temporal memory safety, but I think to be convenient to use we may need lifetimes. I see no reason this could not be added to C.

      2 replies →