Comment by sagemode

I have always detested C (also C++) because it's so unreadable... the snippets of code you cite are just so dense ie. a function like n2s() gives pretty much no indication of what it does to a casual reader. Just reading the RFC (it is pretty much written in a C style) gives me the creeps.

The RFC doesn't mention why there has to be a payload, why the payload has to be random size, why they are doing an echo of this payload, why there has to be a padding after the payload. If this data is just a regular C struct like the RFC makes it out to be (I didn't know you could have a struct with a variable size, but apparently the fields are really pointers or it's just a mental model and not a real struct).

Apparently the purpose of the payload is path MTU discovery. Something that is supposed to happen at the IP layer, but I don't know enough about datagram packets. I guess an application may want to know about the MTU as well...

I'm not here to point fingers, I'm just saying C is a nightmare to me and a reason for me to never be involved with system programming or something like drafting RFC's ;-).

But if one can argue that C is a bad choice for writing this stuff, then that is not an isolated thing. "C" is also the language of the RFCs. "C" is also the mindset of the people doing that writing. After all, the language you speak determines how you think. It introduces concepts that become part of your mental models. I could give many examples, but that's not really the point.

And it's about style and what you give attention to. To me, that RFC is a real bad document. It starts to explain requirements to exceptional scenario's (like when the payload is too big) before even having introduced and explained the main concepts and the how and why's.

So while you may argue that this is a C problem and not a protocol problem, it is really all related.

And you may also say, in response to someone blaming these coders, that blame is inappropriate (and it is) because these are volunteers and they are donating their free time to something to find valuable, the whole distribution and burden of responsibility is, naturally, also part of the culture and how people self-organize and so on.

As someone else explained (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7558394) the protocol is real bad but it is the result of more or less political limitations around submitting RFCs for approval. There is no reason for the payload in TLS (but apparently there is in DTLS) but my point is simply this:

If you are doing inelegant design this will spill over into inelegant implementation. And you're bound to end up with flaws.

Rather than trying to isolate the fault here or there, I would say this is a much larger cultural thing to become aware of.