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"two things are within an order of magnitude, and two other things are within an order of magnitude, and those two groups are three orders of magnitude apart" does sound like two groups to me.

by applfanboysbgon2 hours ago|

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> those two groups are three orders of magnitude apart

They aren't necessarily, though. Supposing that Zig were "10 issues per MLoC" (with just as much handwaving as the original poster), it would be equidistant from Rust and C. Java may also be more than one order of magnitude away from Rust; we say ~0 but is it 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001...? And why is "1 issue per MLoC" the acceptable metric that delineates what constitutes table-stakes memory-safe language? Because it's a nice, round-sounding number? I think 0 is a nicer, rounder number than 1, so let's call only Java table stakes and condemn all other languages to the garbage bin, tradeoffs be damned. Or would you say your arbitrary delineation point is worth more than mine?

by joshuamorton1 hours ago|

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> Or would you say your arbitrary delineation point is worth more than mine?

Yes for the reasons I already gave. I think that at the point that you're having to stretch the numbers from their post to the breaking point to remove the pretty clear order of magnitude differences it's not really a constructive way to engage.

I think you have two groups with one at ~.1 and one on ~100. You seen to either disagree with that, or think it doesn't matter, I'm not sure which. But taking that assumption as true it is self evident that the 3-order-of magnitude demarcation is not arbitrary.

by applfanboysbgon1 hours ago|

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I think it is absolutely arbitrary. First because I believe every order of magnitude is significant. You handwave away that one order of magnitude difference is fine but three is bad. I think this is hypocritcal, and that if you want to be a memory safety purist who ignores all tradeoffs and declares a language fundamentally unusable on safety grounds, even a single order of magnitude of additional issues should clearly be unacceptable. And simultaneously you group them arbitrarily -- what is your actual basis for suggesting that Zig code is more likely to be 100 than 10, or that 10 somehow bares grouping at 100 rather than grouping .1 and 10 together at 1? You also fail to address that there may be more than one order of magnitude between Rust and Java. It is entirely plausible that Rust is closer to Zig than to Java.

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Rate-limit edit replying to below response:

> a variety of statements I haven't said

We are in a conversation thread specifically about statements of this nature, which I was contesting. The original poster of this thread called their arbitrary definition of memory safety "table stakes" and explicitly said that they rule out Zig as a language completely on this basis alone. If you don't agree with them, I'm not sure what we're discussing.

> you take issue with the assumptions I'm making ... but you could just state that instead of saying that I'm being hypocritical

The only assumption I disagreed with is assigning Zig to exactly 100 when a poster I was replying to originally asserted a range of "10 or 100"; and regardless of whether we agree on assigning a concrete lower/upper bound to that assumption, everything else is not an assumption but a value judgment given the condition "assuming the premise holds". Yet your position is taking those value judgments - which orders of magnitudes to accept, which to group together as being the same degree of memory safety - and asserting them as objectively correct boundaries with minimal rationalisation beyond "because I feel it is so".

by joshuamorton1 hours ago|

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Yes, it's clear you take issue with the assumptions I'm making. That's okay. If you don't accept my premise that's fine, but you could just state that instead of saying that I'm being hypocritical or strutting out a variety of statements I haven't said ("you want to be a memory safety purist who ignores all tradeoffs and declares a language fundamentally unusable on safety grounds").

If you want to have a conversation with me about the things I'm talking about, I welcome it, but I don't see that happening.

by joshuamorton20 minutes ago|

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> Yet your position is taking those value judgments - which orders of magnitudes to accept, which to group together as being the same degree of memory safety - and asserting them as objectively correct boundaries with minimal rationalisation beyond "because I feel it is so".

Yes, like I keep saying: two clusters each within an order of magnitude, separated by three orders of magnitude feel to me like two distinct things. That does not at all feel arbitrary. I think that claim is pretty self-explanatory. You appear to think it reduces to "because I feel it so" and in some sense it does. I am applying my own judgement and values in constructing those clusters. Someone who felt that any amount of memory safety was unacceptable would structure them differently. Someone who cared naught about memory safety would similarly group them differently too.