Comment by inigyou
6 hours ago
Then that's equivocation. Why do we want a very specific form of safety instead of wanting safety in general?
6 hours ago
Then that's equivocation. Why do we want a very specific form of safety instead of wanting safety in general?
Memory safety is:
1. Foundational for other forms of safety
2. Has an objective definition, when some other forms of safety are either subjective or inter-subjective.
That said, I don't understand why your parent brought this up to you, you are talking about memory safety in your original comment here, so that's what Rust's safety is about.
I feel that the buzz phrase "memory safety" has been defined by Rust to mean "the safety Rust gives you". Obviously memory usage can be more safe or less safe, and Rust is decidedly on the safe end of the spectrum, but it also has the gaping type system holes demonstrated in cve-rs which completely shatter any claim that safe code is safe, and there are other bugs which occur in Rust while the programmer is distracted by trying to prove their code is memory-safe.
> the buzz phrase "memory safety" has been defined by Rust to mean "the safety Rust gives you".
It's more that Rust's safety guarantee is memory safety. No more, no less. It's not about buzz, this term was used long before Rust existed.
> it also has the gaping type system holes demonstrated in cve-rs
This is not a "gaping hole". It is a compiler bug, which has never been found in the wild.
> there are other bugs which occur in Rust
This is true! Every language can have bugs in it, and Rust does not claim to solve all bugs.
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> Why do we want a very specific form of safety instead of wanting safety in general?
Because a “very specific form of safety” is a useful tool in achieving “safety in general”
Because a “very specific form of safety” is tractable for a compiler and language runtime to achieve, “safety in general” isn’t
> safety in general
This is impossible. General words like "safe" and "good" are subjective, and useless in a technical context unless you ground the discussion by giving them specific definitions. Otherwise everyone ends up talking past each other.
Okay, thanks for debunking all good products, safe houses and clean water. I guess they are just products, houses, and water.
Good for what? A hammer is good for driving a nail, but not good for driving a screw.
Safe for what? My house is safe for humans, but not safe for tropical birds.
Clean enough for what? Our water is clean enough to wash my ass, but not clean enough to wash a telescope mirror.
Sorry but life is not a Disney movie where some things are unequivocally good/safe and other things are unequivocally bad/unsafe. There are gradients and conditions, and communication requires a shared language between participating parties to navigate them.
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