I guess you are not using malloc then. malloc will say "sure, here is your gigabyte allocation" and then when your program gets around to using that space may well segfault if the memory is not actually available at that time. I'm curious, how are you defending yourself from that?

Yes you did. However Go, C++ never offered anything more than "nice syntax" for this and that. Java helped with real problems, at the expense of the JVM and GC overhead. Rust however offers features never seen before in compiled to native code languages. Even the very anal Ada learned tricks from Rust in recent years,

No. C does not do exactly what you tell it to do. Not with modern day optimisers transforming your code in all kind of interesting ways and doing totally weird things if you accidentally hit some undefined behaviour (as defined by the C standard)

Those "arguments" you might have with the Rust compiler are no different that the arguments you will have with your failing tests, and debugger after your C code has compiled. The problems of getting your types lined up and lifetimes of data are the same in both cases.

I for one would rather have the compiler check all those things rather than have to review against 1000 page coding standards that try to avoid the same problems and then debug the cases I overlooked.

I cannot understand why programmers resist automating away that tedious work.

No, usually invoking Godwin's law is a loser because it's so far detached from the topic under discussion. I think in the case of discussing the authoritarian, wannabe dictatorship that has gained power in the USA it is entirely appropriate. That's how I see it as a Brit observer.

That is why the guy was at an on-ramp with a sign: "Will fix your printer for food". He has been there for 20 years !

Jees what. Excellent troll. Nightmare idea.

No, you may actually be correct. If there was a bias for people to be like you they would predominantly assume that people generally prefer to go to the right so they usually turn to the left. Which is the observed phenomena.

So the question is what do people do on their own. Do they explore an empty room clockwise or anticlockwise?

Please learn about the Luddite movement. It was not about stopping progress. It was about the appalling poor working conditions, minimal wages and exploitation of children working in the factories of the Industrial Revolution. It was about the huge concentration of wealth with the industrialists. Things were very dire for people for a 100 years. The Luddites were a start in asserting our rights to health and happiness and some share in the increased wealth the machines brought.

Does all that ring a bell for you in recent times? The Luddites were right.

By "trust" there I don't necessarily mean I would not let my best friend borrow a credit card if they really needed to. But that would be a temporary borrow, with good reason and I'd certainly check what happened afterward. My friends are great, they would not make such a request except in emergency or other very good reason.

Oh my f****ing God.

I would not trust my best friend with my credit card. Certainly not some devious company with an AI tool.

That is exactly why many people are boycotting American products as much as possible. That is why the EU is trying to ween itself of of American tech services. That is why Canada is restricting imports from America.

Americans had better take steps to preserve their democracy before it is too late.

You mean like all those US voters that elected Trump in large part because of his "no wars" promises? Looks like they lost control pretty quickly.

So what if it is actually an end to public contribution? Who said that all Open Source projects have to be open to code contributions by all and sundry random people?

>> There is an answer to disingenuous pull requests. That is doing the work to review the code before it's implemented.

Nice idea but we see many reports of Open Source projects being inundated with pull requests in recent times. Many AI generated garbage. It is not reasonable to expect the project developers to wade through all the slop.

LLMs interact with humans, thus also gaining lots of new bad training data. They also get trained on ever increasing amounts of AI slop thus potentially getting worse and worse.

Be aware that the Luddites were not all about being anti-technology. The main concern of the Luddites was exploitation of people in the factories and mines of the growing Industrial Revolution and the general state of poverty and misery it caused for most people while a few became incredibly wealthy. Things were pretty dire for a 100 years or so.

Does this sound familiar to you?

The Luddites were right.