[TUHS] : C dialects (was: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary)

[Bakul Shah]

On Mar 13, 2023, at 2:14 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 5:08 PM Bakul Shah <bakul at iitbombay.org> wrote:
>> On Mar 13, 2023, at 2:00 PM, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 3/13/23, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Frankly, I'd probably rather see ISO drop a bunch of the stuff they are now
>>>> requiring and fall back at least to K&R2 -- keep it simple.
>>> 
>>> I agree.  Every language has toxic features--things that seemed like
>>> good ideas at the time but turn out to have been mistakes when they're
>>> better understood.  Every good programming shop has its rules
>>> concerning certain language features or practices that are not allowed
>>> in the code, usually for safety or maintainability reasons.
>> 
>> You can't drop features from a widely deployed language; but while
>> we are dreaming, what I'd like to see is a total *ban* on any and
>> all optimizations. What you get is what you see!
> 
> Hey, they dropped `gets` from the standard library! Never say never.

It is easy to see that incorrect use of gets can lead to buffer
overflow problems so they "fixed" the easier downstream issue but
not the root cause! And that is the problem. Easy things are fixed
but nobody dares fix more fundamental problems.

And that was my point. All that standardization committees can do
is tweak a few things here and there.