Do We Need a Replacement for C?
C is a widely used language used to program anything from OS kernels to cryptography libraries. Is it time for a replacement?
The C programming language is even today among the most popular languages in usage despite having been released all the way back in 1972, and having quite a number of limitations and flaws by today’s standards.
This is the key reason why C ought to be replaced. Too much critical software is written in C/C++ which has wide ranging implications. One example is bugs in libraries such as OpenSSL. C is notoriously bad at catching problems such as buffer overruns. C is a language allowing you to shoot yourself in the foot in too may ways: What is wrong with C.
This may sound strange coming from someone who is an avid fan of dynamic languages. However the issue here is type safety. Dynamic languages such as Python and Julia typically catch wrong usage of types. Such as using an integer in an if-statement. Dynamic languages may not catch problems at compilation time but if they have a strong type system, a lot of problems will be caught at runtime. That matters especially with security. Security vulnerabilities is in large part down to causing undefined behavior, rather than a controlled shutdown.
