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Software is Crap
Bugs, design failures, and neglected documentation. Let s do better.
Latest posts
The world is on fire, but not because of C23
New ad-free location: https://davmac.org/blog/the-world-is-on-fire-but-not-c23.html An article was published on acmqueue last month entitled Catch-23: The New C Standard Sets the World on Fire . It s a bad article; I ll go into that shortly; it comes on the back of similar bad arguments that I ve personally either stumbled across, or been involved in, lately, so I d like Continue reading The world…
Forgetting about the problem of memory
There s a pattern that emerged in software some time ago, that bothers me: in a nutshell, it is that it s become acceptable to assume that memory is unlimited. More precisely, it is the notion that it is acceptable for a program to crash if memory is exhausted. It s easy to guess some reasons why this Continue reading Forgetting about the problem of memory
Hammers and nails, and operator overloads
A response to Spooky action at a distance by Drew DeVault. As Abraham Maslow said in 1966, I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. Wikipedia, Law of the Instrument Our familiarity with particular tools, and the ways in which Continue reading Hammers and nails, and operator overloads
Escape from System D, episode VII
Summary: Dinit reaches alpha; Alpine linux demo image; Booting FreeBSD Well, it s been an awfully long time since I last blogged about Dinit (web page, github), my service-manager / init / wannabe-Systemd-competitor. I d have to say, I never thought it would take this long to come this far; when I started the project, it didn t Continue reading Escape from System D, episode VII
Is C++ type-safe? (There’s two right answers)
I recently allowed myself to be embroiled in an online discussion regarding Rust and C++. It started with a comment (from someone else) complaining how Rust advocates have a tendency to hijack C++ discussions and suggesting that C++ was type-safe, which was responded to by a Rust advocate first saying that C++ wasn t type-safe (because Continue reading Is C++ type-safe? (There s two right answers)
Escape from System D, episode VI: freedom in sight
I don t write often enough about my init-system-slash-service-manager, Dinit (https://github.com/davmac314/dinit). Lots of things have happened since I began writing it, and this year I m in a new country with a new job, and time to work on just-for-the-hell-of-it open-source projects is limited. And of course, writing blog posts detracts from time that could be spent Continue reading Escape from…
Thoughts on password prompts and secure desktop environments
I ve been thinking a little lately about desktop security what makes a desktop system (with a graphical interface) secure or insecure? How is desktop security supposed to work, in particular on a unix-y system (Linux or one of the BSDs, for example)? A quite common occurrence on today s systems is to be prompted for Continue reading Thoughts on password prompts and secure desktop environments
Bad utmp implementations in Glibc and FreeBSD
I recently released another version 0.5.0 of Dinit, the service manager / init system. There were a number of minor improvements, including to the build system (just running make or gmake should be enough on any of the systems which have a pre-defined configuration, no need to edit mconfig by hand), but the Continue reading Bad utmp implementations in Glibc and FreeBSD
On the vagaries of init systems
When I started working on Dinit I had only a fairly vague idea of the particulars of various other init systems, being familiar mainly with Sys V init and to a lesser extent, Systemd and Upstart (the latter of which has more-or-less vanished off the face of the earth). At that stage it was a Continue reading On the vagaries of init systems