Would Rust and it's memory safety stuff have prevented this?

Squeeze2664 · 2024-10-10T08:19:01 1728548341

In some sense, yes. Use-after-free is impossible in safe Rust (if you don't use the unsafe keyword)

ramon156 · 2024-10-10T10:23:12 1728555792

I'd argue that this is a good example of how rust could've prevented use-after-free, but y'know, I'd obviously be glazing.

wslh · 2024-10-10T09:53:52 1728554032

It's not as easy as everyone might think. You could take a look at this thread titled 'My big problem with Rust is too much "unsafe" code' [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41792477

xwolfi · 2024-10-10T08:19:19 1728548359

Java too !

yencabulator · 2024-10-10T16:05:31 1728576331

The difference being that no one in their right mind is thinking of rewriting a browser in Java to also make it faster, while that's exactly what Servo/Stylo etc are all about.

bubblesnort · 2024-10-10T08:21:00 1728548460

And don't forget Ada.

Yoric · 2024-10-10T09:20:27 1728552027

And OCaml or Haskell :)

sph · 2024-10-10T09:37:11 1728553031

Why go fancy? Even Python saves you from use-after-free.

Yoric · 2024-10-10T11:02:16 1728558136

Come on, I had to outbid Ada somehow :)

For what it's worth, Python was also considered at some point for use in the Firefox codebase. I don't remember the rationale for not adopting it, but I think the idea was "we all like Python, but we already have one messy language (JavaScript), let's not make it two".

jeltz · 2024-10-10T10:02:32 1728554552

Brainfuck too!