🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <rsf2s1ds7eigg58ai57iuo22hd38qkhd2k@4ax.com>, William P.N. Smith <news05@compusmiths.com> wrote:
>"Hank Arnold" <rasilon@aol.com> wrote:
>>IMNSHO, MS was forced into this situation of having security problems by the 
>>user community. They were forced over and over again to maintain backward 
>>compatibility whenever they released a new OS. Look at how long it took to 
>>get "real" DOS out of the code.
>
>Careful programming isn't forced on anyone, it's either part of your
>business practices or it isn't.  M$ code has _always_ been quick and
>dirty, and now the chickens have come home to roost in the form of
>buffer overflows _everywhere_, and it's a monumental task (on the
>order of rewriting everything from scratch) to patch the broken bits
>(and then patch the patches, rinse lather repeat).

This is something I don't understand.  I've never programmed in C, so 
I've no idea why anyone would program without "protecting" buffers 
somehow.  It just seems insane to me that you would overlook what, to 
me, seems as basic as the times table.  So why do they do it?  

What "benefits" do programmers derive by allowing the possibility of 
buffer overflow?  Is it something to do with speed?  Simplicity?  
Source code size/transparency?  Or is it just perversity?

>Maybe the "user community" forced it on them by not demanding good
>coding practices (however they would have done that), but I don't have
>a lot of sympathy for the MicroSloth programmers.  Sure, the users put
>up with buggy code, but that's not much of an excuse.
>
>Solutions?  I doubt there are any.

How would the wider "user community" know whether MS's coding 
practices were good or bad?  Where do they get to see the source code 
to enable a judgement?  Could they make a credible judgement if they 
did see it?  

I suspect that, for Joe Blowand his mates, program glitches, 
inconsistencies, and vulnerabilities, are just things that happen and 
are unavoidable due to "the complexity" of it all.

Cheers, Phred.

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