On "Safe" C++

It's deeply unfortunate that this post hasn't gotten more attention here. Perhaps it's because it's very long, but it's worth reading. It's the kind of blog post that I think rings of the truth. No doubt there can be criticisms made, but they do not detract from its substance. Whenever someone is against the mainstream, it is important to hear them out, because one's bias tends to align towards the mainstream. Community is no doubt crucial, when community consists of people and shapes people. I hope this post and its author are given the respect they deserve, instead of being mostly ignored or reviled.

This is equal parts interesting and insufferable—but in a good way, that reminds me of the great canon of the grand tradition of Lengthy Opinionated Internet Diatribes. I was afraid that this style of writing was going out of fashion—I'm overjoyed to be proven wrong here.

The most interesting takeaway for me was learning that Skweezy Jibbs is still around—good for him.

Eight instances of “don't get it twisted” is probably about seven too many for one piece, however.

Partial tl;dr: The post starts from supposdely refering C++ language-safety, as in memory-safety, type-safety, defined-behavior etc., to discussing the personal safety of people in/around the C++ community.

It then seems to focus on one particular case. I haven't fully dug into that affair, but it seems that:

1. In 2011, Arthur O'Dwyer was charged and convicted of two sexual offenses, for which he served a 120-day prison sentence with a longer suspended sentence. One of the offenses may have been rape of a drunk person, but I don't quite see how that squares with the light sentence.

2. He served his sentence, and for the next 10 years did not repeat-offend. During that period he was involved in the C++ community including the standard committee.

2. In 2021, some people asked the C++ Foundation to remove him from CppCon, where he was scheduled to speak. The claim seems to have been that victims of the same offense as O'Dwyer had been convicted of would feel discomfort/lack-of-safety, and avoiding that justifies not letting O'Dwyer speak, attend etc.

3. The foundation kept the complaint secret, conducted a secret process regarding this matter.

4. The foundation's board's decision was to throw O'Dwyer out: They cancelled his talks and forbade his participation from that point onwards. They did this after a "review... of the case and its handling by an outside independent inclusiveness consultant" who apparently consulted that CppCon increase its exclusiveness. See: https://cppcon.org/announcing-cppcon-safety-policy/ which does not mention any names.

5. Izzy Muerte was upset about the secrecy, and they and some others were apparently upset by some aspect of the decision, claiming that "the C++ committee and then-organizers of C++ ... circle[d] the wagons, protect[ed] “one of their own”, and [went] out of their way to threaten, silence, and remove anyone who was deemed a threat to upend the status quo." This is the part I don't understand at all given the decision I mentioned in (4.).

... then the post pivots back to discussing the replies of C++ heavyweights like Sutter, Dos Reis and Bjarne Stroustrup and how they inappropriately handle complaints/concerns regarding C++ memory safety. Then it's complaints on problems with the standardization process (which may well be perfectly valid, I'm just being concise), gatekeeping by Bjarne, Herb Sutter not keeping promises and wasting time with cpp2, modules making it in without proof of a working implementation and with relevant input ignored, Gaby lying and/or gaslighting, and additional accusations (again, possibly all with merit).

There is then some attempt to tie the the O'Dwyer affair to Muerte's criticism of the three's behavior on other matters, that I don't buy.

This gets you to "Come Play My Game, I'll Test Ya", which is where I've gotten thus far.

That was a hard read^W, uhm, skim. Feels like the good old internet at all facets of it. If only I had a whole evening and no more things to pay attention to, like back then. (No /s)