Programming

Is the COBOL committee still working under the assumption that it currently is and will always be the dominant language?

This is my favourite take so far from this post:

"Google’s own data from September 2024 shows that Android’s memory safety vulnerabilities dropped from 76% to 24% over just six years — not by retrofitting safety features onto existing C++ code, but by writing new code in memory-safe languages (Rust, Kotlin, Java). Google’s security blog makes a fascinating observation: vulnerabilities have a half-life. Code that’s five years old has 3.4x to 7.4x lower vulnerability density than new code, because bugs get found and fixed over time. The implication is striking — if you just stop writing new unsafe code, the overall vulnerability rate drops exponentially without touching a single line of existing C++."

Starting to transition away is perhaps the best step if these stats ring true. Then actively seeking out bad C++ practices is probably going to quietly pay dividends as well.

The title is clickbait, but the article is well written.

It is tearing apart some points made in a talk (which I didn't watch). The talk seems to focus on C++26 features (given that you are using C++) while the article argues why you still shouldn't use C++ in the first place, despite the improvements. Mainly because the memory safety features are opt-in. There is also discussion about the CrowdStrike incident, and how it was more of a cultural problem than a language problem.