On: Stop making me memorize the borrow checker

[kanbankaren]

> Oh boy. I see bugs everywhere in C and why the borrow checker exists.

Any examples that you could provide? I have been dealing with C/C++ for close to 30 years. Number of times I have shot myself with undefined/unspecified behavior is less than 5.

[tsimionescu → kanbankaren]

In 30+ years of experience in C, you haven't used a free()d variable or written past the end of a buffer more than 5 times? If that's true, then you have more care and attention than 99.99% of all C experts.

[kanbankaren → tsimionescu]

I should have been clear.

Of course, I have done such mistakes, but they were caught early in the dev. process. I am talking about bugs that were caught in production due to misunderstanding of C compilers on 16/32 bit processors.

I also avoid idioms like *p instead write p[i] whereever possible.

[jjnoakes → kanbankaren]

The number of times you shot yourself in the foot that you know about. Some of those bullets just haven't landed yet. C and C++ give you very interesting foot-guns: sometimes they go off even when you don't touch them (compiler upgrade, dependencies changing, building on a new architecture, ...)

[dafelst → kanbankaren]

The borrow checker isn't just about UB, it is mostly about memory safety.

I'm sure you've seen plenty of use-after-frees/use-after-move/dangling pointer type things or null pointer derefs, or data races, etc etc. These are largely impossible to do in safe rust.

[oneshtein → kanbankaren]

Borrow checker checks memory safety. Undefined/unspecified behavior still present in Rust[1].

[1]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/behavior-considered-unde...

[bombela → oneshtein]

Only from code annotated unsafe. In other words, if you do not use the keyword unsafe, you have no undefined behaviors.

[eddd-ddde → kanbankaren]

Clearly you must be superhuman then, something as simple as forgetting a null pointer check is bound to hit you every now and then.

[kanbankaren → eddd-ddde]

Of course, I do, but they are caught early in the dev. process. Not in production though.

[kstrauser → kanbankaren]

I would contend that’s an unusually sophisticated dev process not used by most.