From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: rixed@happyleptic.org Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.user Subject: A bit further toward the flamewar Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:27:09 +0200 Message-ID: <20111013112709.GA28078@ccellier.rd.securactive.lan> References: <20111012153958.GA20242@ccellier.rd.securactive.lan> <87pqi2ca3q.fsf@gnu.org> <8739exry15.fsf@pobox.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1318505256 22725 80.91.229.12 (13 Oct 2011 11:27:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:27:36 +0000 (UTC) To: guile-user@gnu.org Original-X-From: guile-user-bounces+guile-user=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Oct 13 13:27:32 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-user@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1REJRk-0000kq-HZ for guile-user@m.gmane.org; Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:27:32 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:54359 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1REJRj-0001XF-9U for guile-user@m.gmane.org; Thu, 13 Oct 2011 07:27:31 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:49750) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1REJRc-0001WU-An for guile-user@gnu.org; Thu, 13 Oct 2011 07:27:28 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1REJRY-0001My-9c for guile-user@gnu.org; Thu, 13 Oct 2011 07:27:24 -0400 Original-Received: from eneide.happyleptic.org ([213.251.171.101]:38728) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1REJRY-0001MD-5K for guile-user@gnu.org; Thu, 13 Oct 2011 07:27:20 -0400 Original-Received: from extranet.securactive.org ([82.234.213.170] helo=ccellier.rd.securactive.lan) by eneide.happyleptic.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1REJTo-0001th-7S for guile-user@gnu.org; Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:29:40 +0200 Original-Received: from rixed by ccellier.rd.securactive.lan with local (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1REJRN-0007LY-Hf for guile-user@gnu.org; Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:27:09 +0200 Mail-Followup-To: rixed@happyleptic.org, guile-user@gnu.org Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <8739exry15.fsf@pobox.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 213.251.171.101 X-BeenThere: guile-user@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: General Guile related discussions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guile-user-bounces+guile-user=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: guile-user-bounces+guile-user=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.user:8867 Archived-At: -[ Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 12:22:46PM +0200, Andy Wingo ]---- > Much respect to the late Ritchie, but C is a dangerous language that has > negative impacts on the real world. We need to stop writing code that > launches the missiles (or, more likely, installs malicious keylogging > darknets) if your program has an out-of-bounds array write. Guile helps > people move from C to safe languages, at their own pace :) Scheme is safer than C, because: - It has garbage collection, which solves many trivial memory management bugs; - A buggy program that performs an out-of-bound array access will crash at runtime, which is sometime better than to proceed. - It's much more portable than C, so that porting a program from its developer machine to another one is very unlikely to introduce a bug. C is safer than Scheme, because: - It has no automatic memory management, which avoids a few tricky memory leaks; - A buggy program that performs an out-of-bound array access may proceed with wrong data, which is sometime better than to crash at runtime; - It has a type checker ; if not state of the art, it still stops you from using the wrong type in runtime most of the time. I fail to see why Scheme is intrinsically safer than C, but as I just learnt the death of Denis Ritchie it might be that I'm emotionally biased, so to speak.