{"id":1629,"date":"2024-03-01T06:52:54","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T06:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cppdepend.com\/blog\/?p=1629"},"modified":"2024-03-04T09:45:13","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T09:45:13","slug":"even-the-white-house-wants-you-to-abandon-c-and-c-dont-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cppdepend.com\/blog\/even-the-white-house-wants-you-to-abandon-c-and-c-dont-do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Even the White House wants you to abandon C and C++, It’s time to focus on C++ safety and join the Bjarne initiative."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The C and C++ languages are no longer favored by the highest American authorities. Indeed, the White House wishes for developers to use memory-safe languages. In this report<\/a> published on Monday, the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) of the White House invites developers to reduce the risk of cyberattacks by using languages without memory vulnerabilities. IT companies “can prevent the introduction of multiple vulnerabilities into the digital ecosystem by adopting secure languages,” the presidency said in a statement. It refers to those that are protected against buffer overflow, out-of-bounds reads, and memory leaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

From the report, we can read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Experts have identified a few programming
languages that both lack traits associated with memory safety and also have high proliferation
across critical systems, such as C and C++.Choosing to use memory safe programming languages
at the outset, as recommended by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency\u2019s (CISA)
Open-Source Software Security Roadmap is one example of developing software in a secure-bydesign manner.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As C++ developers, we can’t ignore this significant issue. However, the C++ language is continuously improving, with new features introduced every three years. I’m confident that this issue could be addressed soon. Indeed, Bjarne the C++ creator is aware of the safety issues and works on this topic. He\u2019s created\u00a0a GitHub repository<\/a>, and said about this repository:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cwhere people can put suggestions, and where I\u2019m going to put my drafts and such, so that we can create a community working on getting this kind of stuff done in a reasonable time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

C++ is a very powerful programming language, and it’s not trivial to replace it with another language, as Bjarne said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAnd anyway \u2014 which other language? The way I have seen it argued, we are going to have C++ replaced by about seven different languages, as of suggestions of about now. By the time it happens \u2014 40 years from now \u2014 we\u2019ll probably have 20 different ones, and they have to interoperate. This is going to be difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To get a concrete idea about the Bjarn proposition, you can refer to this video:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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