Safe and Unsafe Carbon

[freedxmgxd]

I think that Carbon should follow the Rust to have a safe and unsafe Carbon. I know that it's impossible to be out from the Unsafe since the Interoperability with C++, but I think that a Default Safe Carbon ever is possible and verbose unsafe where it's not possible to be safe should be a design approach.

[C-BJ]

I think that Carbon should follow the Rust to have a safe and unsafe Carbon. I know that it's impossible to be out from the Unsafe since the Interoperability with C++, but I think that a Default Safe Carbon ever is possible and verbose unsafe where it's not possible to be safe should be a design approach.

I agree with you, but security doesn't have to be the Rust way

[jonmeow]

If Rust works for you, please use it. It's a great language. If you're not sure why we're not matching Rust's approach, please read Why not Rust? in the FAQ. However, Carbon's safety strategy is different. To quote:

Overall, Carbon is making a compromise around safety in order to give a path for C++ to evolve. C++ developers must be comfortable migrating their codebases, and able to do so in a largely automated manner. In order to achieve automated migration, Carbon cannot require fundamental redesigns of migrated C++ code. While a migration tool could in theory mark all migrated code as unsafe, Carbon should use a safety strategy that degrades gracefully and offers improvements for C++ code, whether migrated or not.

[freedxmgxd]

Reading the Carbon's safety strategy helps me understand why not match Rust's approach, I really think that the unsafe blocks of Rust and the safe by default, it's a pretty elegant approach, since allow that's unsafe things are done, but demand that's the developer stay conscious about the unsafety. I will read more about safety and performance and hope I can contribute to the project.