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0 pointsjosh11b1y ago0 comments

(Carbon lang dev here.)

Carbon is intended to be memory safe! (Not sure whether you intended to write a double negative there.) There are a few reasons that might not be clear:

* Carbon has relatively few people working on it. We currently are prioritizing work on the compiler at the moment, and don't yet have the bandwidth to also work on the safety design.

* As part of our migration-from-C++ story, where we expect code to transition C++ -> unsafe Carbon -> safe Carbon, we plan on supporting unsafe Carbon code with reasonable ergonomics.

* Carbon's original focus was on evolvability, and didn't focus on safety specifically. Since then it has become clear that memory safety is a requirement for Carbon's success, and will be our first test of those evolvability goals. Talks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZTJ9omXOQ0 better reflect more recent plans around this topic.

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bcoates1y ago

Not super familiar with Carbon but .. what's the elevator pitch for porting my C++ to unsafe Carbon? Can it be done with an automated refactoring tool or something?

I feel like if I'm gonna go through the whole nightmare of a code port I should get something for it as opposed to just relying on interop

bitexploder1y ago

The idea is that it is an incremental process. By default you should be able to make minimal changes to your code and it should mostly just work. Over time you can use features that more tightly couple you to Carbon, such as memory safety. Google's motivation is supporting its massive C++ codebase while providing a path for memory safety and other features. If your use case does not closely mirror that of Google's, namely, that you have 10+ year old code you intend, and have, to maintain, Carbon probably doesn't make sense for you and that is generally made pretty clear for anyone interested in the language.

vinkelhake1y ago

Thanks for the correction, I appreciate it!

The double negative was not intended :)

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