Comment by kelnos

15 days ago

>> But, in 2026, writing a greenfield application in a memory-unsafe language like C++ is a crime.

> Don't be swayed by the propaganda. Especially if your application has essentially no untrusted input.*

Eh. I spent many years writing cloud/backend software on the JVM, in between stints writing desktop software. When I was first writing desktop software, it was all in C and C++, and I got used to it, but it wasn't pleasant.

When I came back to writing desktop software in C again (just a few years ago), after writing in memory-safe languages for so long (Java, Scala, Rust, Go), I found going back to C to be just so tedious and annoying. It's just incredibly unpleasant to be chasing down segfaults and data races and crap.

So I think saying it's a "crime" is hyperbole, but even for apps that don't have untrusted input, it's still much more pleasant writing in a language that doesn't let you write memory safety bugs.

(Absolutely agree with you on how it's possible to make nice, small, non-trivial Win32 apps, though I haven't done Windows app development in a couple decades. But I think a lot of people would save themselves a lot of time and headaches if they reached for .NET or something higher level.)