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points by awesome_dude 1 day ago | 0 comments

Let's rewrite everything - said every 15 minutes by every new developer with a new toy.

How about being constructive instead - old bug in old code is no surprise, no matter the language/technology.

This was hardly a convincing argument before the current CVE explosion. By now C needs to be dead and buried for network accessible code.

[–] fartfeatures 1 day ago

Someone needs to tell DARPA:

https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/translating-all-c-to...

[–] eviks 1 day ago

How is this constructive when you're offering nothing to construct? Just saying not to be surprised.

[–] awesome_dude 1 day ago

You really think it wasn't constructive - is that a you bias or a me bias?

[–] dvdkon 22 hours ago

Sorry, it's you. You basically told people that they should expect bugs in old code and shot down the proposed fix without offering any other solution; that's non-constructive by definition.

[–] cowlevel 18 hours ago

tbf "rewrite everything" isn't a very constructive statement either.

[–] grumbelbart2 18 hours ago

Which options are there, really? There is re-write, fixing, and mitigation.

We have a lot of legacy code that probably contains many bugs that could be exploited.

We could either stop using that legacy code, i.e. re-write and move to a newer library / package. Or fix the old code.

I now believe that "fixing" the code is actually in reach for an organization such as Google, which has deep pockets, frontier AI models, and a history of working on open source. Spend a few billions to walk through every package that runs on a common Linux installation, find potential issues and robustify the code.

[–] awesome_dude 14 hours ago

The code is FOSS, it's been sitting there in the open for its lifetime available for anyone to inspect, discover bugs, and fix (patch or rewrite)

The inspection/discovery part is what has accelerated; the fix, patch or rewrite, has not.

People smugly yelling on the internet to rewrite because they have a new toy isn't constructive - why aren't they out there doing it already?