crypto for the average programmer

[Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker]

In message <d4f1333a0512181956x23c64f4et360d10b32fd5cecb at mail.gmail.com> on Sun, 18 Dec 2005 21:56:11 -0600, "Travis H." <solinym at gmail.com> said:

solinym> Anytime someone wants to rewrite a C library in a language
solinym> less prone to buffer overflows, I'm totally for it.  Some say
solinym> that "it's not the library, it's the programmer", but I think
solinym> that denies human factors.  C simply requires too much
solinym> machinery on top of it to use it securely.
[...]
solinym> And yet cryptographers continue to write in C.

C has three really strong points:

 - portability.  It's one of the most wide-spread and portable
   compiled languages that I know of.
 - speed.  Most languages with the same level of portability as C that
   I know of are interpreted.  They will probably never get to the
   level of speed you can get with C.
 - simple or compatible ABI.  C++ could be a good candidate if handled
   properly (yeah, yeah, I know), but I've yet to see that the ABI
   used by different compilers on the same platform not differ so
   much.  Most all, I'm thinking of name mangling (uhm, not really
   sure if that an ABI issue or not :-)).

As soon as there's a more secure language that fills those criteria, I
see not reason why you'd want to stay with C.  In the mean time, we'll
probably have to keep on living with its' defficiencies (I do agree
with you about those).

Cheers,
Richard

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-- 
Richard Levitte                         richard at levitte.org
                                        http://richard.levitte.org/

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including
 the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
						-- C.S. Lewis

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