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0 pointsHAL30009mo ago0 comments

> So your definition of memory safety includes some notion of "plausible" and "realistic"? Neither https://www.memorysafety.org/docs/memory-safety/ nor Wikipedia have such a qualification in their definition. It would help if you could just spell out your definition in full, rather than having us guess.

This is a strawman argument, you're arguing semantics here. You're a smart person, so you know exactly what he means. The perception created by your article is that people shouldn't use Go because it's not memory-safe. But the average developer hearing "not memory-safe" thinks of C/C++ level issues, with RCEs everywhere.

Unless you can show a realistic way this could be exploited for RCE in actual programs, you're just making noise. Further down the thread, you admit yourself that you're in a PLT research bubble and it shows.

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dcow9mo ago

You definitely shouldn’t use Go, but it’s not because of the discussion in TFA. I jest, rhetorically.

Seriously, why are we bashing a researcher for being academic? This makes no fucking sense. Nobody claimed anywhere that people should stop using Go.

esoterae9mo ago

Did you not notice how this started over someone saying "That's not the definition of memory safety" and then prevaricating about the bush when asked to provide their definition? Your theory that this is an argument over semantics is correct, but not fully understood.

ralfj9mo ago

> The perception created by your article is that people shouldn't use Go because it's not memory-safe.

Uh, where exactly am I saying or implying that? I am, in fact, saying that Go is much closer to memory-safe languages than to C, safety-wise.

But I am arguing that the term "memory safe" should only be used for languages that actually went through the effort of thinking this problem through to the end and plugging all the holes through which memory safety violates can sneak in. Go is 99% there, but it's falling slightly short of the goal. I think that's a useful distinction, and I am disappointed that it is regularly swept under the rug, which is why I wrote this blog post. You are free to disagree, I never expected to convince everyone. But I think I gave some people some new food for thought, and that's all I can hope for.

hdevalence9mo ago

> you're arguing semantics here

Yes, semantics — what do things mean, exactly? — is the subject of the discussion here and is actually quite important in general.

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