

Pointing the finger at buffer overflows, and other C quotes - krishna2
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/cquotes.html

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BrandonM
It sounds like a sensationalist rant, in my opinion, especially the part where
he compares accidental software failure to life-or-death non-accidents
(removing stop signs, locking doors). Does anyone know of any cases of death-
by-buffer-overflow? Expecting someone to get the same punishment for a
programming error that someone else gets for removing a stop sign is silly.

What's the difference between "real-time garbage collection" and ordinary
garbage collection? Wikipedia says that Baker "has made contributions in
garbage collection", but is it sufficient for him to state that he invented
real-time garbage collection? Did Reddit _invent_ a "better news aggregating
site"?

The part where he's ranting about how terrible C is really irks me. While it's
true that a _lot_ of people have used C in situations where it was not the
best option, it certainly has its uses, and to deny that C was a major step
forward in programming is fallacy. Programming in assembler has all the
shortcomings of C and none of the benefits, and there are always going to be
certain software applications that need to be close to the hardware. Not to
mention that if you've mathematically verified the correctness of your code,
runtime bounds checking really is a waste of CPU cycles.

The article sounds more to me like someone who is bitter that he hasn't gotten
more recognition for his contributions and is upset that what seems to him to
be an inferior technology has more market share than the tech he has been
involved in. Baker may be a great guy who has made important contributions to
computer science, but that doesn't mean that resentment wasn't clouding his
judgment in this instance.

