‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

Platform-independent SIMD in Go

414 points · 152 comments · yurivish

  1. u8 · · focus · HN ↗
    This is why I love Go. Nobody was asking for this, but they took the time to do it right and continue to Push go as a memory safe, high-level systems language.
    1. OutOfHere · · focus · HN ↗
      (removed)
      1. typical182 · · focus · HN ↗
        Go is broadly considered to be a memory safe language.

        See for example comments from tptacek like:

        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43335748">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43335748

        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46028232">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=46028232

        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=44672371">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=44672371

        (The gist: memory safety is a term of art coined by security practitioners. Go, Python, Rust, Java, others: memory safe. C&#x2F;C++: memory unsafe. Periodically, people in different slices of industry or academia come up with new definitions of memory safety that declare Rust or Go or other languages to be memory unsafe, but that is not by the broadly accepted definition across industry.)

        1. mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
          Rust does allow you to overflow buffers, confuse types, and duplicate mutable pointers in safe code. See cve-rs.
          1. simonask · · focus · HN ↗
            No, Rust does not allow that. The current Rust compiler does, but that’s a bug that is being fixed.

            At some point in the future, a fully backwards compatible Rust compiler will report an error when you try to compile cve-rs.

            1. mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
              I define undefined behaviour as a bug in C++. Now C++ is memory-safe!

              btw, it&#x27;s not actually that hard to write correct code in C++, easier than in C because you have all the container types. The problem is that nothing will tell you when you write incorrect code - there&#x27;s no guarantee.

              1. simonask · · focus · HN ↗
                UB is part of the C++ standard. Surely you can understand the difference between the C++ standard and bugs in compilers implementing the C++ standard. This is that.
                1. mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
                  Which part of the Rust standard does cve-rs violate?
                  1. simonask · · focus · HN ↗
                    Rust does not have an ISO standard, but it does have a language design, and if you knew the first thing about cve-rs (including what’s on its own Github page), you would know that this is an extremely confirmed soundness bug.

                    The cve-rs repo is not meant to be the toxic gotcha aimed at Rust language maintainers you seem to think it is. It’s a repro case.

                    1. mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
                      So the detailed spec is &quot;whatever the compiler does&quot;. And the compiler allows cve-rs, so it does not violate the detailed spec.
                      1. simonask · · focus · HN ↗
                        No, and you are clearly trolling, and I’ll engage in no further interaction with you.
              2. aw1621107 · · focus · HN ↗
                &gt; I define undefined behaviour as a bug in C++. Now C++ is memory-safe!

                I mean, sure, insofar as such a thing would also imply that a) the standard would need quite a bit of cleanup&#x2F;clarification work to not contradict your definition, and b) the main optimizing C++ compilers are miscompiling code, analogous to how cve-rs is a rustc miscompilation rather than an issue with Rust itself.

                (Fil-C might be an interesting exception here, though IIRC its definition of memory safety is slightly different)

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.