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Comment by foobar33333 | Hacker News Reader

I'd be putting this in 1000 layers of sandboxing since its a C program with network access.

Your point being? It's been serving sqlite.org just fine for all this time. You seem to be making some pretty big assumptions about security here without actually explaining what your specific concerns are.

I think the original comment is partially a joke. Maybe there isn't specifically anything wrong with this, but there is the fact that it is written in C. Historically there is a good precedent of this being an issue. C does not guarantee correctness to the same level as more modern languages.

If it was written in Haskell or Rust for example you could be more sure about correctness. I believe for something like this, correctness is fairly important. Not to mention you probably wont even lose speed. As for if the code is understandable, it is a 2600 lines of terse-ish C [0]. Do you really think about the entire blob at the same time?

[0] https://sqlite.org/althttpd/file?name=althttpd.c

People need to stop assuming that memory safety == functional safety. They are two very different things. Rust ensures memory safety, but it won't stop you from making logical mistakes. You can't be "sure about correctness" unless proven mathematically.

I agree, but it is an extra level above c. Same with using a more advanced type system, more easily encoding problem constraints in that type system.

if you run gnu/linux and are worried by C code running... I have bad news for you.

His operating system is probably GNU/Docker.

Not far off it. I run fedora silverblue with is flatpak and podman

The google security team is working on fixing this with rust.

Indirectly, they're also pushing for "fixing" of Firefox with Rust (only 84%[?] to go!)

I hate to tell you but half the internet runs on C. You can't type ".com" without passing through C code

Does it being written by the Sqlite devs not improve the outlook for you?

how many bugs may the 1000 layers bring. If each layer has 3 LOC it's more than the webserver in the first place.

Maybe I'm getting old but these days I'm having a hard time telling if comments like these are serious or sarcastic.

It's definitely not you. There is a general term for this called "Poe's Law" that says something like: "a sufficiently thorough parody is indistinguishable from the original". That GP might be an example of this.

It's both. Of course we have to rely on C now because most stuff is C but this is not an ideal situation and C shouldn't be used for new software.

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