Re: A Famous Security Bug

On 24/03/2024 21:49, Keith Thompson wrote:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:
[...]

But what people want are the conveniences and familiarity of a HLL,
without the bloody-mindedness of an optimising C compiler.

[...]
 Exactly which people want that?
 The evidence suggests that, while some people undoubtedly want that (and
it's a perfectly legitimate desire), there isn't enough demand to induce
anyone to actually produce such a thing and for it to catch on.

I personally think (or speculate, if you feel the word is more appropriate given that I have no real evidence) that a major part of this is a lack of agreement on what optimisations these people want or don't want.  I expect Kaz and Bart would agree that they want C compilers to be required to generate code that does what they mean it to do, and be able to optimise within those requirements to do the required job as efficiently as possible.  But I expect they would disagree in many ways in regard to what they mean by it all - what optimisations are allowed, and what code /really/ means in their eyes.
The best we can reasonably hope for is for a carefully considered document that describes minimum requirements, and for compilers to provide flags to allow fine-tuning so that programmers can get the results they want.
And that is /exactly/ what we have with C and quality C compilers. Sure, none of this is perfect or an ideal fit for everyone and every task - but it is good enough that you'd need to come up with something quite extraordinary to make it attractive compared to C.

Developers have had decades to define and implement the kind of language
you're talking about.  Why haven't they?