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Comment by uecker | original | C for Rust programmers
[−]uecker · 2026-10-11 Sun 11:24 UTC · link
The most push back we get against making the language or compiler stricter is not for this reason though, it is mostly that the maintenance burden for existing code is considered to high.

But this illustrates how absurd the discussion is nowadays. Incrementally making things stricter and fixing warnings along the way is one of the most cost efficient way to improve quality and safety. Rewriting the software one of the most expensive. So if the former is rejected because the burden is too high, then obviously the overall aim to make things safer can not be too important and the push for rewrites must partially be motivated by other interests.

[−]pjmlp · 2026-10-11 Sun 11:39 UTC · link
I saw this talk yesterday,

"The Power of Ten: Rules for Safety Critical Coding by Gerard Holzmann"

https://youtu.be/GRJtYwneG2Q?is=M0z7hnpQ78C8fLLP

At a moment he mentions a trick he played on JPL folks, his static analysis tool, instead of showing all the issues found, would only display the top 10, without telling them there were actually more than 10.

So they felt motivated to fix them, it were only 10 after all.

Naturally eventually they became aware of the trick.