It's not hallucination, it's a basic extrapolation. "Bun has had an extremely high amount of crashes/memory bugs due to them using Zig" is the same statement as "using Zig resulted in Bun having an extremely high amount of crashes/memory bugs". It is then natural to ask whether their position is "using Zig results in an extremely high amount of crashes/bugs" in general.
replyThat's a hell of a lot more than "basic extrapolation." You're misrepresenting the original claim to fight against one that's trivially easy to dispute. "Bun has had an extremely high amount of crashes/memory bugs due to them using Zig" (which unlike Rust, doesn't prevent you from writing them) is a completely different statement than your "using Zig results in an extremely high amount of crashes/bugs." Implying that such a generalization was even on the table is insulting.
replyYes, obviously you can write high-quality software in Zig. But does Zig categorically reject the kind of bugs Bun was suffering from? Rust does.
The point is that the "extremely high amount of crashes/bugs" is maybe not the fault of Zig after all, as was implied.
replyHow software behaves is very obviously downstream of the tools (in this case programming language) used to build it.
reply"Downstream of" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Language has an effect on, but in no way determines, the reliability of software written in it.
replyDownstream doesn't imply determinism.
replyThe original claim is one of determinism. Your use of the term "downstream" is hiding the distinction; it can be read in either way, so it bridges the gap between the position you want to defend ("using Zig causes a higher probability of memory bugs") and the position you're forced to defend ("using Zig results in extremely many memory bugs").
replyIn short, I'm accusing you of doing a motte-and-bailey.
It's generalizing from Bun (which might be especially tricky code) to other software that might not have the similar issues. There are lots of different kinds of software.
replyEven assuming that's a correct interpretation, does "using C/C++ results in having an extremely high amount of crashes/memory bugs" not true?
replyNo, that's provably false by a fairly simple existence proof. If it was true that using C results in an "extremely high amount of crashes/memory bugs", we would expect to not find any substantial pieces of software written in C without an "extremely high amount of crashes/memory bugs". Now where exactly you draw that line is necessarily going to be somewhat arbitrary, but by any definition, I think we can all agree that SQLite does not fit that description. Yet SQLite is written in C. Therefore, we conclude that the statement must be false. QED.
replyNow C does have some aspects which make it more prone to crashes and memory bugs. The less strong statement of "using C results in a higher propensity for crashes/memory bugs than Rust" is absolutely true, I would argue. And both C++ and Rust inherit some (but not all, and not the same) of the aspects which make C prone to memory bugs. (So does Go, I would argue, but less than C++ and Zig.)
Bah waking up today to notice a typo, after the edit window. "And both C++ and Rust inherit some ... aspects" was of course meant to be "And both C++ and Zig inherit some ... aspects".
reply>I think we can all agree that SQLite does not fit that description
replyOne of the reasons WebSQL died was due to how many memory bug related vulnerabilities SQLite had.
You know, I try to ask questions rather than making assertions in order to better my chances at provoking useful thought and conversation.
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